


The Boy in the Sun

by EJ (lilyeverlasting)



Series: Kitsune Tales [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Humor, Character Death, Family Drama, Happy Ending, Kitsune, LLF Comment Project, Magic, Minor Haruno Sakura/Yamanaka Ino, Multi, One-Sided Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, POV Alternating, Plotty, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5404739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyeverlasting/pseuds/EJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is imminent. It is, as his father always said when he forgot he never smiled, what happens when you piss off a god.</p><p>“Weeks, boy.” Tsunade points at Sasuke. “You have just a few weeks to find the sun.”</p><p>A (sort of) soulmate AU complete with "find the love of your life or die" curse marks, Sasuke ignoring anyone who calls him "young Lord", Naruto in a fox mask thinking he's all that and sneaky with a sarcastic Kurama at his heels, Sakura actually kicking some ass as much as she's vying for it, Itachi's need for self-sacrifice that  apparently transcends universes, and Shishui wondering just how the hell he became a pirate in the first place all in a fantasy setting with some Princess Bride/Princess Mononoke inspirations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Killing Curse

**Author's Note:**

> None of the archive warnings apply to this fic. This story is what happens after I watch The Princess Bride and Princess Mononoke. Expect angst and humor, mild violence, language, (no major) character death, and adventure with a dash of romance. Unbeta'd. See errors just let me know.
> 
> Quick Hierarchy Guide for Fire Country:  
> Emperor of the Five Countries  
> Daimyō  
> Hokage  
> Clan Lords  
> Everyone else.

 

Sasuke wears black on the day he's told he is going to die. His mother wears white. There had been a crow cawing outside his window earlier that morning, glass-eyed and picking at the bones of a mouse one of the cats hadn't bothered to bring in.

A crow is bad luck as everyone knows, and Sasuke is grim and dark, a young man already mourning his own death.

Black is supposed to be an important color for these sorts of things.  Mourners wear black-or white, depends on what part of the world you come from-for death. But the color white can flip from death to happy weddings. Sasuke’s mother is grim, pale-faced, no matter how well the white kimono compliments her or how bright she looks in the room. She's wearing the one with the koi that Sasuke remembers tracing along her sleeve as a little boy. He should be fearing omens and bad luck and curses and wondering how many beats his heart has left, but instead, he only thinks of his mother. He wonders if, when she finally looks him in the eye, she’ll only think of funerals.

Maybe she will never see the day Sasuke marries.

Mikoto pours tea with steady hands.

She does not cry.

Summer calls from beyond the shoji doors and their paper-thin veils. Cicadas. Sasuke can see the shadows of their plump bodies resting against the washi paper, the fairy-beat of their wings.  

He is not afraid, he thinks. From down the hall, he can hear his brother sob. It’s a thin, moaning sound, like a ghost already roams the halls. The room where he sits is wide and open like a mouth, and the hall to his brother trails like the dark throat of a lotus. Waiting.

Sasuke looks away from it.

“Months. Maybe less,” grunts the medicine woman, Tsunade. She hasn’t done anything but look at him. She smells like a farmer. Like hay and alcohol and pig shit. She pours sake into her cup of tea and downs it, like the heat in her throat has no bite. She’s chosen to sit on the floor while Mikoto kneels, Sasuke at her side, leaving the place Mikoto has set for her bare.

Tsunade will not meet Sasuke's gaze now, and she takes the sake bottle for herself after she belches. Loudly. An anger surges within Sasuke’s chest. White-hot and unbridled.

“Well?” he snaps. “Is that it?”

“Sasuke,” Mikoto warns.

Mikoto has often told him he is too quick to anger. A soft heart, she’d said, and his brother, Itachi, had laughed, flicked his forehead until Sasuke stamped his foot and cried. That summer he’d turned six.

He is twenty now.

He is not afraid. The cicadas drown out the loud gulp of Tsunade’s throat as she takes more sake, throat so white and smooth for a woman who’s supposed to be so old. Witchcraft, Fugaku had said. He hadn’t laughed. Fugaku never laughed. Father never smiled. 

 

A crow caws from outside the window. Sasuke fidgets. Death is imminent. It is, as his father always said when he forgot he never smiled, what happens when you piss off a god.

Tsunade slaps her glass down hard on the _handai's_ sleek surface. Sasuke's lip curlswhile Mikoto's purse. Her grandfather had built that table. The medicine woman is as violent as she looks. But not as violent as Mikoto with a tantō. 

 

The Uchiha clan has always been a breed of warriors.

Tsunade’s amber eyes narrow. “Give me your hand, boy,” she says finally, and she grimaces in the afternoon heat, fanning her breasts.

Sasuke does. The medicine woman is quick, her fingers snaring his wrist like a cobra’s mouth as she twists his hand palm up to study the small black crescent moon etched into Sasuke’s skin. The first mark of the curse. There’s an unnatural steel in Tsunade’s grip that makes Sasuke twitch and his lip curl.

Tsunade grunts again and drops his hand like a hot coal. “Less time than I thought.” She drinks more sake. Mikoto calls for another bottle, and a quiet servant peels away from a corner.

“It appeared just last night,” says Mikoto quietly.

Tsunade hums at this. “Even worse.” She swallows more sake, but if there is any remorse or sympathy in her voice, Sasuke can’t hear it. He fidgets.

Down the hall, Itachi cries out again. Tsunade’s head swivels toward the sound. The cicadas keep up their summer songs, and outside, Tsunade’s apprentice can be heard chasing a pig around the yard.  “No, TonTon! NO!” Her silhouette races past the shoji doors.

She’s quickly followed by the gardener, Yoshi, who starts to yell, “My radishes! That pig ate my radishes! The garden is ruined! MASTER UCHIHAAAAAAAA!”

Tsunade smacks her lips and glares at the door before standing. She looks to Mikoto sharply.

“How far gone is he?” Tsunade doesn’t mean Sasuke.

Mikoto's lashes flutter as she lowers her eyes. She pours herself tea. Her tone is mild.  “My husband had him tied to the bed. We are... respecting Itachi’s wishes to see the curse through.”

The hall is quiet now.

Sasuke bows his head to keep his mother from noticing the angry scowl that pulls at his face.

Tsunade grimaces. “Well I’ll be damned.” And she swipes the second bottle of sake out of the hands of the servant who shuffles into the room. Tsunade doesn’t offer to take a look. Mikoto doesn’t offer more sake.

“Weeks, boy.” Tsunade points at Sasuke. “You have just a few weeks to find the sun.”

She slips away before the gardener can heckle her to pay for the ruined daikon radishes.

**  
**

* * *

**  
**

Everyone claims to know the sun.

There’s a line. A vast, undulating sea of people who crowd the sweeping yard, the road outside the Uchiha’s gate, Yoshi’s precious vegetable garden. They arrive on foot, by horse and carriage; by gleaming wings of slow, floating aircrafts that drop from the sky like swans-brighter than festival lanterns and just as light; by balloon, drifting to the ground waving clan flags as they travel from all corners of the country.

The Land of Fire never waits. No one ever forgets the Uchiha name. It’s a magic name, a cursed name. A name steeped in old money, old land, and even older history.

People whisper the Emperor will send a crowned prince, his youngest son. It’s only a rumor, but villagers still gather, stop their day to bring the market to the dirt road like some sort of holiday (“dried seahorse pendants for good luck! Blessed with a spell for love! Give your child a fighting chance for the young lord’s heart!” It’s really an aphrodisiac that would probably only work if someone licked the good luck charm, but the fisherwoman isn’t about to admit that). Children eat dango from the vendors who’ve brought their kiosks, searching the skies for Royal aircraft. The Daimyō  himself isn't one to miss the occasion, and everyone squeals when a girl spots the airship. The Daimyō  sends his youngest daughter and his youngest son to the front gates of the Uchiha clan head. Yoshi blubbers at their feet when they are gracefully dismissed. Together, they are the embodiment of beauty in trailing silk as they step lightly out into the yard.

“Apologies, highnesses!”

The  Daimyō's son raises a brow and offers an arm to his sister. In Fire Country, he's a prince. He has a smooth, young face browned from a childhood out at sea, and when it bunches into a no-harm-done grin, his cheeks dimple, but his eyes are sharp as flint. He stage-whispers to his sister, loud and harsh enough to turn a few heads, “The young lord is a brat. I can’t say I’m disappointed.” His sister stifles a squeaking laugh and raises a demure hand to her mouth to hide her smile. Yoshi turns red at the insult and nods in acknowledgement, silent as he rises to his feet, head bowed.

“Highnesses.”

The prince chuckles and leads his sister to the stiff-backed guards waiting to escort them safely back to their aircraft.

Sasuke watches them leave from his seat in the hall, subdued.

Fugaku is furious, silently seething in his seat. He motions for the next in line with a tight smile and hisses, “This is all for _you_. The Daimyō  sent his own children for _you_. Itachi would have been grateful-” he stops suddenly, disgruntled, and shakes his head.

It’s the right-or wrong-thing to say, and it cuts deep. Sasuke straightens in his seat, straightens the frown twisting his mouth. His chest feels tight, and so does his throat. It aches. He can feel the pressure of fresh anger pulsing at his temple.

“I _am_ grateful,” Sasuke says quietly. Fugaku glances at him, silent and cold.

The procession never stops.

“Lord Uchiha!” the people cry. Sasuke sees costumes, nobility clad in jewelry. One sports a ring.

“Made from drops of sunlight, of course, my Lord! Obtained and bottled from the very peaks of Mount Taiyō, the Sun Mountain in the west! Would you care to touch it? Bright like fire, and just as hot!”.

One Lord presents a masked daughter draped in a gold kimono. “Touched by the sun god himself, my Lord!”

Sasuke waves through each presentation until Fugaku angrily silences him with a sharp, “Be grateful!”. The day begins to wan, the afternoon heat comfortable enough to lull the most attentive scam artist to sleep. The muscles under Sasuke’s eye, in his right arm, spasm painfully, and he grimaces as another civilian bows before darting away. _Do they all take me for a fool?_   he wonders.

He waits for each act, face set in an impassive mask. One woman looks at the young lord only once before she tears away down the hall while her parents chase after her (“No, I won’t!” To her credit she single-handedly fights off three guards without much trouble). She doesn’t return.

The hall is wide and open, and the servants have placed lotuses in crystal bowls of water. By the time the sun slides to the west, low in the sky, there are few visitors left. The glory of the room is tarnished. Heads of flowers wither on the floor, trampled. A short, stocky man hurries into the hall after peeking inside and throwing himself on the floor.

Sasuke rolls his eyes.

“Lord Uchiha! I, Kizashi Haruno, humbly come before you, a mere servant of this land, to present to you my daughter.”

The banker presses his forehead to the floor. He is of a lesser clan, but not so low Fugaku would refuse to entertain him. The banker, after all, has some money to his name if nothing else.

Sasuke glares from his seat. He’s sweating under his navy suit-Fugaku had settled on something modern for his son, choosing a smartly-styled double breasted suit. Fugaku himself sits swathed in a traditional kimono. Together, they're militant and sharp in style so that he and Sasuke sit on their clan thrones like overlords, the Uchiha symbol stitched into their backs, the fan bright like a drop of blood. Sasuke grits his teeth and sighs, flicking a curious grass seed off the knee of his white pants.

“I won’t tell you again,” Fugaku whispers harshly, “be respectful. This is _your_ life we are saving.”  Sasuke schools his expression into something carefully neutral. Fugaku asks the banker to stand. He stumbles and his hat slips off his head. Someone hides a laugh behind a cough. The banker grins and laughs at himself, embarrassed but good-natured, and pretends to brush dust off his black yukata.

“Show me,” Fugaku says, edging forward in his seat. The banker is a mousy man, with a windburned face and a little nose, and a crowded mouth. His pink hair is dull and styled like the trampled lotus he’s stepping on. The banker smiles widely. He claps, and servants carry in a litter, setting it down gently on the floor.

“My Lords,” cries the banker, “my beautiful daughter, Sakura, who has been blessed by the Sun God Himself.” At once the servants open the heavy curtains of the litter, and Sasuke throws up a hand to hide his eyes from the blinding light that spills into the room.

Fugaku laughs, like a boy at a circus.

Sasuke peeks through the spaces in his fingers, and looks over his shoulder to notice the banker’s hired servants, hidden in the dark corners of the room, the gleam of the mirrors in their hands bright.

The light scatters, dies away, and Sasuke is granted the chance to look upon this “sun-blessed” girl. Her nose is little, like her father’s, and her red lips are thin, painted to look plump, her face round and happy. Her face has been painted, too, long pink hair held back from her eyes, and she sits like a doll, still and quiet. Her jade eyes rise to meet Sasuke’s just once, before she loses her nerve and drops her gaze, mouth split in an excited grin. She giggles.

Sasuke stands. On his left hand, his thumb reaches to graze over the crescent moon on his palm. It’s strangely cold, like the small strip of skin has lost all circulation.The banker holds his breath. The girl looks up. Fugaku studies his son’s face. The people in line crane their necks, peering over each other anxiously, mouths open. No one speaks.

Sasuke scoffs. “That is not the sun.” He snubs the banker and his daughter, walking away to a shudder of gasps and whispers that pepper the hall of family members and spectators and those still waiting.

“What was that?” someone asks in the uproar, “has the young lord called the banker a liar?” There’s a collective cry of outrage. Sasuke notices the less brave, the less fortunate scam artists, peeling away from the crowd to flee. It’s hard not to smile.

Kizashi is horrified, paling a couple shades lighter. His daughter hides behind a fan in distress, hissing at the servants to hurry and close the litter. Fugaku rises, apologizing in Sasuke’s wake.

“I apologize on my son’s behalf, Haruno, but I believe we are done here.” He motions for the banker to leave.

Kizashi gapes. “B-b-but, my Lord! Please!”

Sasuke does not wait to hear the rest. He slips away, down the connecting servant’s hall (they scatter like mice, hugging the walls, and watching the young lord pass, murmuring to each other). He steps out into the yard, past the koi pond, and into the training yard. There’s a pug-faced dog asleep in the grass, curled into the belly of a shaggy half-wolf. The pug yawns at Sasuke, ears twitching, and opens a lazy eye to watch.

“He’s in a good mood today. Better watch out,” the pug warns. The half-wolf beside him huffs sleepily in agreement. Sasuke smiles, unsheathing his katana.

“My Lord!” cries a servant. It’s Hideki, Fugaku’s most faithful, and arguably most annoying. Sasuke pretends not to notice. Hideki’s running through the grass, flushed and upset and tripping over his own shoes. He’s a small, bespectacled man in a blue servant’s yukata and old enough to be Sasuke’s grandfather. Hideki nearly falls into the koi pond with a shriek before huffing and continuing on his way, crossing the bridge carefully and keeping to one side. He’s known for his streaks of bad luck.

“My Lord, please wait! There are other contenders and a _princess_ still waiting!  THE BYAKUGAN PRINCESS FOR GOD’S SAKE! The Hyuuga clan ambassadors are currently in the hall and they _are not_ to be kept waiting-My Lord!”  Hideki hurries into the training yard, pausing to clutch at his chest and catch his breath.

“Sasuke!”

Sasuke ignores him and assumes a fighting stance.

Kakashi is waiting, cross-legged In the dirt. His masked face is tilted toward the setting sun. He is the only spot of black in the field, his mess of wiry gray hair covering a lost, scarred eye on the left side of his face.

“Another bust, hmm?” Kakashi hums, not opening his eye, and Sasuke scowls, wondering if his sensei was napping. Kakashi can sleep in the most unusual places. Sasuke caught him asleep standing once. He’s also seen Kakashi nap on a rocky river bed. Once, when Sasuke was younger and more mischievous, he filled his teacher’s bed with beetles. Kakashi slept in it anyway.

“They take me for an idiot,” Sasuke grates. His fingers tighten around the katana’s handle. “This time, it was a trick with mirrors to make her seem bright.” He slashes the air with the katana and enjoys the hiss of its slice.

Kakashi clucks, eye still peacefully closed. “What was it yesterday? Paint?”

Sasuke laughs derisively. “They painted her gold.” Without warning he strikes, but his sensei lazily leans to his left to avoid certain decapitation, not once opening his eye, and in the same fluid motion, propels his body with a sweeping kick to Sasuke’s feet.

Sasuke avoids it, and by that time, Kakashi’s one hooded gray eye has finally opened, and he’s pulled two kunai from his belt, gripped tightly in each fist. Sasuke whirls, and the kunai stop the bite of the katana in a shower of sparks and a sharp hiss.

“My Lord, please,” squeaks Hideki, wringing his hands, “Your father has expressly stated that in your condition you must not to engage in-”

“Good,” murmurs Kakashi.

Sasuke smirks, just a little, and pushes against his teacher’s restraint. “Don’t patronize me.” He leaps away, and Kakashi moves like water with each jab, hack, and slice. When Sasuke looks again, Hideki is gone. He rolls his head on his shoulders, dragging the tip of his sword in the sand.

“You’re angry,” says Kakashi with a yawn, and he redirects another slash with a flick of his wrist and a kunai. Sasuke grunts.

Kakashi arches a brow as he slashes in a wide arc. “And in pain.”

Sasuke laughs, ducking, but it’s more of a pained hiss. He can feel the pain burrowing deep in his bones. There’s an electric shock lancing through his left arm. “I can still hand you your head.” The burn lances up his arm, up his spine into the back of his skull.

The killing curse.

Kakashi sighs. “I wouldn’t bet on that.”

Sasuke charges.

“Stop! STOP! STOOOOOPPPP!”  Hideki is waving his arms, bounding through the yard, with Fugaku at his heels.

Sasuke swings the katana, and the pain recedes, just a little. Kakashi sidesteps, and says flatly, “Oh, look, your father.”

The sand kicks up in a little cloud as Sasuke’s katana scrapes gouges into the earth. He drops to his knees suddenly, bracing himself against the steel, biting back a curse. The pain is blinding, and for a moment, he can’t seem to release his grip on the katana’s handle. When he blinks, he sees red. A trickle of sweat drips from his brow.

“Let go of the sword, Sasuke. Let’s get you up.” Kakashi is standing over him, waiting, a hand outstretched politely. The sky is darkening, twilight on the rise. The frogs in the koi pond are singing. Fugaku shouts from across the yard, furious.

“HATAKE!”

Kakashi turns with a small sigh. “Lord Fugaku,” He greets respectfully, bowing, and Pakun, the pug-faced dog lazing the yard begins to bark. Somewhere in the distance, another dog howls.

Sasuke wills his fingers to open, but instead, his arm spasms. He shouts, dropping to the sand,  his left hand gripping his right wrist as he writhes. A scalding burn is ripping over his arm in a blaze. He’s-he’s on fire-on fire-!

He opens his eyes to look down at himself and gasps in horror at the indigo bones creeping over his hand like a damning tattoo. Ghost bones. His eyes burn. It’s the first time he’s seen it on his own skin. Sasuke’s stomach jolts. He wonders what will happen when the scalding bones spread. Will he burn? Turn to ash when his heart stops? Will he feel it when he dies?

His sensei is hovering over him. Kakashi’s brow is furrowed. The dogs are screaming now, howling, yipping, snarling. Sasuke closes his eyes.

“Quickly!” Fugaku bawls, and Kakashi hefts Sasuke to his knees with one arm. A bucket of icy, magicked water is thrown over his head, and Sasuke screams in anguish as the bones sizzle off his skin, steaming. He shivers. In a daze, he watches as the sandalled feet of his Father march toward Kakashi.

“You had strict orders!” Fugaku snarls. The lines in his weathered face deepen with his rage.

Kakashi’s languid stance does not change. “Apologies, my Lord. I would have remembered if it hadn’t been for the flea in my ear. It was very distracting.” Hideki moans at the absurdity of the excuse with his head in his hands. Kakashi is known for his incredible white lies.

Kakashi looks down at Sasuke, patting his shoulder with a rough hand before hooking Sasuke’s arm in a strong grip and hauling him to his feet.

“Upsie daisy!”

Sasuke glares at him, swaying as the servants rush forward to drape him in a warm blanket. He closes his eyes, the voices around him twirling in his head.

“Gently! Get the young Lord to bed!”

“My sincerest apologies, Lord Uchiha,” Kakashi repeats humbly, and Sasuke looks away from him as the staff herd him away. The yard blurs away with the fading sun. The dogs howl.

The moon is rising.

 

 

 


	2. Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I've never been in love."  
> "Haven't you?"

At night, a ghost haunts the Uchiha house. Sasuke can hear it.

Sleep doesn’t come easy. The pain inflicted by a curse as dark and intricate as the Uchiha’s cannot be soothed by any ordinary healing salve. He’ll sleep and wake writhing with it. The light of the lamp in his room burns a bright circle into the back of his eyelids he can still see when he closes his eyes. He feels like the unmoving center of an endless loop of motion, watching, half conscious from the sleep syrup, as nurses and his parents constantly drift in and out of his room. He listens for his ghost, but Sasuke’s body feels heavy. His eyes flutter, and he can’t fight it. Soon he’s pulled away, deep, deeper, until he’s lost in the snare of a dream.

Sasuke dreams he’s a little boy again, creeping along the hall and crouched low, hidden in the pit of a dark corner. It’s midnight, and when he tiptoes past his parents’ room he can hear his father’s gentle snores. He’s alone. He’s seven years old, and he thinks he hears a ghost at night. Sloping, dragging footsteps and pained moans. He can’t sleep without the flicker of a small lamp by his bed. He hovers glumly by his brother’s closed bedroom door. Itachi’s bed is empty, as it has been for weeks now since he left for school on the far east side of the country. Nighttime is worse without Itachi. His mother is spending the night with Grandmother Kotone, who’s battling a bout of pneumonia. There is no one left to fight the shadows under Sasuke’s bed or the scary sounds in the hallway. Tonight, he’s determined to find his nightmare and end it himself.

He grips the wooden sword his father made him for his seventh birthday last month. “You’re a young man now, Sasuke,” Fugaku had told him gravely. “Be brave.”

The floorboards sigh as Sasuke hurries to the end of the hall, breathing too quickly and pausing to look down the fork in his road. The first path will eventually lead him to the front of the house, the second, to the dining room, and past that, a training room and Fugaku’s office. Sasuke is never allowed inside, where Fugaku keeps law books and old antique things made out glass and meets with men and women with shiny badges on their clothes and too-strict voices that sound frightening even when they try to offer Sasuke candy. He’s a military man, Mikoto said once.

Mind made up, Sasuke draws in a shaking, but brave breath, and turns to his left instead. A ghost wouldn’t hide in Fugaku’s office anyway; there are too many things to break and no one, not even the dead Sasuke figures, would care to ignite Fugaku’s quiet but scary wrath.

There’s a thump from behind him. Sasuke keeps his sword raised, moving in a slow circle, eyes wide. His stomach feels bubbly, he’s cold, and he’s breathing so hard his heart feels like a rabbit caught inside his chest. Somewhere, he can hear the footsteps again, dragging across the floor heavily. Something pale flits in his peripheral, but it’s gone as quickly as he notices it.

“Hello?” he whispers. No one answers. The house is dark and quiet. A cricket that must have found its way inside starts to chirp, and then suddenly it stops. Sasuke looks around before slowly lowering his sword, letting the blunted tip drop to the floor. His shoulders sag, and he sighs in relief, gathering his thoughts. Maybe the pale thing was only Duchess, Mikoto’s white cat.  Maybe the footsteps were made by Hideki checking the locks as he always does. Maybe there never was a ghost at all-

“BOO!”

A faceless figure in white is looming behind him, hunched like a ghoul. Sasuke’s quick and quiet, even though he’s scared, and he’s as fluid as a reflex. The arc of his wooden sword is collected, accurate, and swift. Fugaku would have been proud. Sasuke lands a hard hit, cracking the sword over the ghost’s round little head, and it crumples to the floor with a pained gasp.

“Ow! You bastard!” There’s only one person alive, as far as Sasuke knows, who would call him a bastard.

It’s not a ghost at all, and Sasuke glowers at his ghost, embarrassed. He doesn’t let go of his wooden sword.

“You moron, Naruto,” he retaliates, and his face feels hot. The scrappy little boy under the white sheet is nearly as old as Sasuke is, except his birthday is later in the year and Sasuke can lord being seven first over the other boy's head. Naruto kicks out his legs with every “ow!” he says. He hisses curses any other little boy like Sasuke would get in a lot of trouble for knowing because a little gentleman shouldn’t know such things, but this is Naruto and he doesn’t care about gentlemen, because being a gentleman is boring.

Sasuke grabs at the sheet and pulls it away. Naruto’s cradling his head, swimming in gray pajamas nearly two sizes too large, and if Sasuke didn’t know him any better, he would say Naruto was about to cry, because his eyes are narrowed and even in the dark Sasuke can see they’re wet. But he won’t, and he isn’t, because he’s Naruto, and he told Sasuke once a real fighter doesn’t cry when they get hurt, they keep on fighting just like the heroes on all the radio shows.

“Mmmmm, owowowow! I hate you!”

Sasuke ignores him. “What are you doing in here? You’re not allowed.” It’s true. Naruto pulls a face, crossing his arms over his scrawny chest. Sasuke sighs.

“You’ll get in trouble,” Sasuke reminds him again, and Naruto rolls his eyes, gingerly rising to his feet.

“So? I still scared you. Told you I’d get you back for-” And the enormity of what he just accomplished makes Naruto forget the bump on his head, forget whatever it was he was about to say, and he smiles so wide that Sasuke can see the dark space from the missing tooth he lost yesterday. He eyes Naruto warily.

Naruto loves pranks.

Sasuke scoffs. “No you didn’t.”

“Yes I did!”

“No, you didn’t! I wasn’t scared!”

“Ehehehehe, yeah right, you nearly pissed your prissy nightgown!” He’s laughing hard enough he’s crying real tears as he tries to swallow back the chuckles. It’s still midnight, and the boys are not supposed to be awake.

“No I didn’t and it’s not a nightgown it’s a night _shirt_ , idiot!” Sasuke hisses back hotly, stamping a foot and tugging self-consciously at his buttoned-up night _shirt_.

“Hehehe, whatever, I scared you. I really scared you!” Naruto grins crookedly and Sasuke notices the point of a canine slipping over his bottom lip. The little blond boy is still snickering, hands hooked behind his head. His grin is feral, his blue eyes look black under the scant moonlight reaching past the windows, and the light hair on his head is just as wild and unkempt as he is.

His father still won’t tell Sasuke why Naruto is the way he is, no matter how much Sasuke pesters him. Why the teeth on the side of Naruto’s mouth are pointier than his own, why Naruto’s cheeks are marked, and why they look like whiskers painted on his tanned skin. They curl when Naruto smiles wide enough, and it’s a smile that Sasuke knows means trouble.

Naruto’s wearing it now.

Something goes thump again, and both boys fall silent, spines snapping straight. Naruto’s eyes narrow again, and he hums in his throat, hands on his hips, waiting for a trick. The thump happens again, and Naruto grabs Sasuke’s arm in a death grip, eyes wide. Sasuke waits five long seconds before he speaks.

“I think it’s just Hideki or the cat or something,” Sasuke whispers. Naruto sighs, like he’s deflating, and releases Sasuke’s arm.

“Oh, oh okay.” He chuckles a little.

“You’ll get in trouble if you’re caught,” Sasuke warns again. Naruto doesn’t answer, only looks around. Getting in trouble is never a big deal to him.

“You gonna rat on me?” he asks seriously, but he’s still smiling, a little goblin who’s just tumbled into a cave full of gold. Sasuke shoots him an annoyed look, head cocked. Of course not.

“Let’s do a prank!”

“I don’t-”

“Yeah, your dad’s got a real stick up his ass, right?” Sasuke wrinkles his nose. Only Naruto, or maybe Jiraiya-sensei (if he didn’t feel like he valued his life that day) would say something like that. “It’ll be funny!”

“He’ll kill us,” Sasuke deadpans, but a flutter of excitement is settling in his gut, and Naruto giggles. Sasuke tries not to smile.

“That’s why it’ll be funny,” Naruto insists, throwing an arm over Sasuke’s shoulders and stage whispering into his ear. “He’s so serious all the time he’d never see it coming! Serious people are the perfect targets,” he finishes sagely, releasing Sasuke. He gently nudges Sasuke in the side as he makes for the kitchen. Sasuke follows.

“Wooow, your house is so fancy! C’mon! I’m thinking a little honey and-”

Someone, or something, groans, and Naruto freezes. Sasuke whirls around, sword raised and heart pounding.

“Ohhh….” It’s a pained, drawn out groan that makes Sasuke’s hackles rise. There’s no one there. Behind Sasuke, Naruto’s grabbed his arm again, craning his neck over Sasuke’s shoulder.

“Wha-what the hell was that?”

  
Sasuke holds his breath, shaking his head. There’s a shadow in the corner up ahead. Sasuke’s eyes narrow, trying to pierce through the dark.

The ghost finally rounds the corner, dragging his feet and lifting his head, startled.

“Boys…?” the ghost gasps out, and in that moment he steps into a weak pool of moonlight. Naruto shrieks loud enough to wake the dead, dragging Sasuke behind him before he can do more than take a brave step forward, wooden sword brandished.

“Are you crazy? He was a skeleton! A freakin’ _skeleton_ , you can’t fight that!”

“His face…!” Sasuke gasps, tripping over his own feet, and Naruto panics when the lights flicker on. He stops, an oomph! escaping his throat when Sasuke crashes into him. The skeleton man shuffles behind them, arm outstretched.

“Boys, don’t be scared, please,” he begs. Naruto whimpers, but Sasuke knows that voice.

“Obito?” Sasuke says wonderingly, chilled. He feels a little sick thinking of his older cousin, his mother’s nephew, whom he hasn’t seen for weeks. One day Obito had been there, and then he’d vanished.

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit!” Naruto hops from foot to foot then throws himself dramatically in front of Sasuke when the other boy doesn’t budge, and who’s decided not to be scared anymore.

“You don’t want him! Take me! I’m tastierrrr-herrrrrr!” Naruto blubbers, shoulders shaking as he shoves at Sasuke bravely. The skeleton man groans pitifully.

“I’ll hold him off!” Naruto sniffles, already admitting defeat and imminent death by hungry ghost. Sasuke’s oddly touched. He doesn’t move.

“SASUKE!” Fugaku roars, sliding into the hall in a silk robe Sasuke will never quite forget. He nearly crashes into Mikoto’s favorite porcelain vase. He blinks at the sight before him once he realizes Sasuke isn't in any danger.

Fugaku pales. “Obito,” and Sasuke has never heard his father talk in this kind of voice, like he can’t breathe. Sasuke’s dimly aware of Naruto quaking in front of him, still on his knees on the floor, probably feeling as sick as Sasuke is, but only because he’s not supposed to be in the house. Yet he doesn’t try to run away. Not once.

“Forgive me,” rasps the skeleton man. “I didn’t mean-” he doesn’t finish.

Sasuke studies the face of this skeleton man with his cousin’s voice. Obito sways on his feet, huffing in pain and bracing himself against the wall before he sinks to the floor. Fugaku hurries to his side, but even his hands falter, as if he’s afraid to touch him.

Obito’s face hides behind the macabre indigo mask of a skull that will to continue sneer and melt out of the shadows in Sasuke’s nightmares until the day he dies. Sasuke can see the bones over every uncovered inch of skin. He stares. Somehow, he thinks this is all a dream, locked inside an old memory, but if it is Sasuke isn’t waking up, and Obito’s skull mask never disappears, until it’s branded in Sasuke’s memory.

Obito stares back at him with glazed jet eyes that seem to burn with a ruby heat just beneath the dark iris. They’re eyes the Uchiha are so well known for. They’re eyes no one ever forgets.

A servant hurtles into the hall and makes a strangled noise in her throat. Sasuke knows her. Ume always snuck him candy when Mikoto wasn’t looking.

“Lord Fugaku!” Ume bows jerkily. She’s scared, red in the face. “Please forgive me. Here, let me take him,” and she reaches for Obito, looping one of his arms around her shoulders. Ume’s always been strong. Obito’s feet drag behind him.

“There you are. It’s alright.”

Obito sobs.

Fugaku straightens, looking away from his nephew. “I never want to see this happen again.” His voice is mild, quiet, and it makes Sasuke lower his eyes. His father is angry.

“He gets restless, my Lord,” Ume pleads.

“Then take him out of his room once in awhile. It doesn’t matter now. Sasuke has seen.” He hisses through clenched teeth. Ume flinches.

Fugaku pinches the bridge of his nose. “Telegraph my brother-in-law. Inform him of the situation. Tell him we may no longer be able to accommodate Obito in this...state while he travels.”

“Yes, my Lord,” she responds meekly. When she’s gone, Fugaku turns to the boys behind him. Naruto stares at the floor. Sasuke looks up.

“What happened to him-?”

“Go to bed, Sasuke.” Fugaku barks. Sasuke recoils. Fugaku is a large man. Stoic and tall and strong. He marches forward and reaches the boys in two clipped strides. He grabs Naruto by the arm, lifting him to his feet.

“And you-” Fugaku growls, and Sasuke’s eyes catch Naruto’s summer-blue gaze for only a moment before the other boy looks away.

“Does your sensei know you’re out of bed?”

“No, sir.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, maybe Jiraiya’s losing his touch. If I ever catch you in here again, I’ll punish you myself.”

Naruto looks gray in the face. Sasuke watches this wild boy who sleeps in a cabin at the edge of the property with the two men Fugaku hired to train his sons in the fighting arts. Naruto is meant for Sasuke. He trains alongside Sasuke, a sparring partner meant especially for the Uchiha boy. Brawlers. Many lower and middle class children make a living this way when they’re too young to work; a dummy who can hit back and bleed just for the upper class. Maybe one day when he’s older Naruto will escape to wander the countryside like Jiraiya; a forgotten soldier picked up by noble or upper class families who’ll hire him to stay and train their children or protect their wealth and families. Maybe he will join the army or an airfleet, carried off to war. Something. But for now Naruto is only an orphan, raised and trained under the watchful and roving eye of Jiraiya-sensei, the man who’d found him.

“Yes, sir,” Naruto repeats, ashen.

Fugaku nods his head once. “Get out of my house.”

Naruto runs for the door.

In the morning, Fugaku leads Sasuke to the sandy training arena where Jiraiya-sensei and his apprentice, Kakashi, wait. Naruto’s playing in the sand, drawing swirls with a stick until Hideki arrives and tells him to stand. Sasuke watches Naruto bound upright like a spring  before taking a step back from Hideki, who holds a switch and looks apologetic. He bends down to whisper to the little boy with a hand on his shoulder. Naruto doesn’t look at Sasuke. He’s too far away and Sasuke can’t hear what they’re saying. Naruto’s bottom lip trembles, but he wipes his nose on his arm and shrugs, kicking the sand.

Jiraiya-sensei is stony-faced, muttering to Kakashi and turned away. Kakashi looks bored, as Kakashi always does, lounging against the wooden fence like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Sasuke glances up at his father nervously as they enter the arena. Hideki’s presence is confusing. The bubbling excitement he felt thinking that perhaps his father may watch his training begins to fade.

“Father, what’s happening?”

Fugaku orders Hideki to begin with a nod.  He settles a heavy hand on Sasuke's shoulder, the warmth bleeding into Sasuke's skin. His lips quirk with an excited smile that fades when Fugaku says, “First, a lesson must be taught, then you may continue with your training."

Sasuke counts twelve slaps across Naruto’s hand for trespassing. Naruto doesn’t cry. He gasps. Sasuke looks away, flinching with each hiss of the switch. With the twelfth slap Hideki steps back and bows to Fugaku, excusing himself.

Sasuke’s eyes snaps up to study his father’s reaction, blinking back tears. Fugaku only squeezes his son's shoulder gently.

“Work hard today, son,” Fugaku says shortly, “and you’ll do well. One day it will be your honor to give your heart to the clan.” He pats Sasuke on the head, twice. He doesn’t say anything else, and wanders away without a backward glance.

Sasuke stands motionless by the wooden fence, an angry torrent swirling inside him that seems too big for a seven year old. It feels like a whirlpool, swallowing everything until only the bad feelings are left. There’s disappointment, because Fugaku never stays. Anger, because Naruto’s right hand burns an angry red. Sadness, and something else that feels like a hole in his chest with every breath he takes.

Naruto isn’t looking at him.

“Sasuke,” calls his teacher, and Jiraiya gestures to the bō in the sand, instructing the boys to lift the wooden staffs in a steel-cut voice. The young lord will practice his bōjutsu today. Naruto’s eyes water as he holds his upright. Jiraiya-sensei scowls, but not at the boys.

Sasuke settles into an offensive stance when Naruto looks past him, curious, and says in a wobbly voice, “Hey, look.”

Obito sits gloomily in a wheelchair, led out to the grass to feed the fish. Ume leaves him for a moment, saying something Sasuke can’t hear. He looks away.

“Ready,” begins Jiraiya-sensei. Sasuke stares at Naruto’s welted red hand curled around his bō.

Later, when Sasuke looks again, Obito’s chair is empty, the pond rippling like spilled mercury in the sunlight.

 

* * *

 

Sasuke wakes feeling as though something is lost. He can’t place it. His heart is beating quick, a rabbit trapped in the cage of his chest. Sasuke lies there for a long moment in the dark of the early dawn and remembers his cousin.

He remembers his ghost in the hall so many years ago. Now another haunts the house, and Sasuke sits up when he hears servants hurrying past his room. They don’t come to his door, and he listens, a feeling of dread beginning to bloom in his chest. Their footsteps are quick and harried, a small hailstorm in the hall.

Sasuke looks out his bedroom window. The sun is starting to spill over the countryside, dawn’s first rays reaching like the tendrils of a broken yolk. He sees the green waving boughs of a birch tree. An empty porch with forgotten flower pots. No crow. No bad omens. He rolls out of bed, wincing. The pain sizzling on his skin is dull now. He pushes past the door cautiously, glancing left to right before hurrying out into the hall, only to come face to face with old Kiyoko, one of his family’s hired nurses. She paints an imposing picture for such a small woman, blocking his path like a stubborn boulder, hands on her hips.

Maybe Kiyoko should have instructed him in the art of stealth he thinks dryly, annoyed.

She spares him no pity. “To bed with you!” she orders brusquely, and only someone like Kiyoko can manage to look and sound so threatening when she is the one who has to look up to meet Sasuke in the eye. “That or go wash up. You have a very long day ahead of you-don’t you go and give me that look!- let me tell you that it’s never worth it to be at the brunt end of your father’s irritation. Not to mention he’s working very hard to save your life!”

Sasuke spares her his sneer. He considers-after all, one must choose their battles wisely. “You’re right, as always, Kiyoko,” he says humbly, ignoring the irritable but fond roll of her eyes. He disappears into his room and waits behind the door. Satisfied, Kiyoko hurries off. When she’s gone Sasuke slips back into the hall, following her path.

No one else appears. Sasuke is alone in the gray-dawn of the house. It’s quiet. So deathly quiet, until Sasuke begins to wonder if the shadows themselves have swallowed his family whole. His body tenses, each muscle coiled taut like a spring. This feels familiar, uncanny, and the dread Sasuke feels ices over until his blood runs cold.

Itachi’s room is not far from his own, waiting just around the corner as it always has. Sasuke pauses. The door is closed, as it always is, sealing Itachi away in a place Sasuke can never reach.

A hoarse cry of pain sends him stumbling forward before he hesitates, hand hovering before it drops to his side and he leans against the adjacent wall. Each groan makes him wince. Sasuke exhales slowly. Itachi cries out again before he bursts through the door.

“Itachi-!”

The nurses gape at him. Kiyoko is furious. “OUT!” she hollers, as another tries to shield Itachi from view with her body. Itachi’s bedroom is doused in shadow, the sun hidden by heavy velvet curtains draped over the windows. Only the weak flicker of a lamp plays orange light along the walls. The lamplight doesn’t reach the bed, and the nurses, all in white, stand like wraiths before it.

“We cannot allow this, young lord. Please understand. You must go.”

Sasuke’s throat tightens. Itachi’s fallen silent. “I want to see my brother.”

Kiyoko scowls. “For your own good, we cannot-”

Sasuke pushes past her. She doesn’t stop him, only stands stolidly still. The other nurse turns her back from the sight.

Sasuke freezes by the foot of his brother’s bed.

Kiyoko sighs, placing a bone-thin hand on Sasuke’s arm. “Now, now-” she says gently, but Sasuke pulls away from her.

“The water,” Sasuke croaks. “Get him the healing water!”

Kiyoko glares at him, her softness gone. “My Lord-”

“Now!” he snarls.

The nurse heaves a bracing sigh before saying, “Your brother has expressly stated-”

“I didn’t give you a choice,” Sasuke hisses in a low voice, and Kiyoko’s eyes widen a fraction, her slack jawed expression twisting into an ugly frown.

“AI!” she barks, and the other nurse in the room jumps.

“Y-yes?”

“Fetch the medicine woman’s healing water.”

Ai blanches. “But-”

“Do it.” Kiyoko leaves no room for argument.

“Of course. My lord.” Ai bows to Sasuke before scurrying away.

 

Kiyoko busies herself with gathering the wash, leaving Sasuke stunned at his brother’s bedside.

“You are too hard on him, Kiyoko.” Itachi’s voice is breathless, a quiet rumble.

Kiyoko huffs. “Forgive me, my Lord, but you are far too soft.”

Sasuke’s hands shake as he reaches out, before pulling back. “Itachi,” he says, but nothing else follows. From the gloom of his canopied bed, Itachi tries to smile, but it doesn’t work, and instead he only gazes up at his younger brother. His eyes are kind. Bright.  His black hair fans out on the pillow beneath him in a tangled mess, a dark halo.

Sasuke wants to look away, but he can’t.

“But it’s always been that way, hasn’t it?” Kiyoko continues, and her smile is sad, dark eyes twinkling. “Never too far from each other, even if it was only in spirit.” She leaves without a word, pausing by the doorway to glance at the brothers before covering her mouth with a hand and closing the door softly behind her.

Sasuke can’t speak. He sinks to his knees by his brother’s bedside and slowly takes Itachi’s hand in his own.

Itachi’s hand is cold, like ice. The curse is overtaking him. The ghost bones have reached his head, a halved skull leering at Sasuke with a split grinning mouth, hiding the right side of Itachi’s pale face. Every bone in Itachi’s body is traced indigo onto his skin, except for the left side of his face. The skull is the death knell. The curse is nearly over. Soon the mask will be complete and when it is, it will only be a matter of days before his brother’s heart stops.  Sasuke grips Itachi’s hand tighter. His eyes squeeze shut. He’s afraid of what he’ll do if they open.

“I asked,” begins Itachi, “That they not give me the water.” Sasuke shivers at the sound of his voice. There’s something different about it. Pained. Hollow. Not the same warm baritone he’s used to.

“You need it,” Sasuke says brokenly, and he’s reminded of a time, back from his boyhood, when he'd sprained an ankle training. Itachi carried him the rest of the way home and Sasuke had stubbornly insisted that he didn’t need the nurse. He was fine.

“It’ll help-”

Itachi’s fingers clasp Sasuke’s in a vice. “No,” he says, and somehow he manages to smile, like the answers have lain themselves before him and Itachi has humbly accepted them all. Like a true warrior.

“You and I both know it works only so many times.”

“This is your _life_ -” Sasuke explodes, and he feels sick when he’s suddenly reminded of his father saying, _this is your life we’re saving_. He bends his head until their clasped hands brush his forehead.

He will not cry.

“Don’t do this,” Sasuke manages, and his throat aches with the effort to push his voice through it. “If you just tried, I know you would-”

“The Goddess Kaguya comes to you the moment before your heart stops.”

Sasuke’s words die on his tongue and he stares at his brother, wide-eyed and tear-streaked.

“If you go through the curse willingly, she will grant you a favor on your deathbed.” Itachi isn’t looking at Sasuke now. He’s staring up at the canopy as if there’s something there Sasuke can’t see. His voice is quieter, subdued. He rests a shaking hand on his chest.

“I’m asking her for your life. For her to pardon you.”

Sasuke releases Itachi’s hand, upright in an instant and taking a bewildered step back. “No. _No,_ that’s ridiculous-”

“Is it?” Itachi wonders, and he smiles again,  but it's sharp. “How many of us will really find the sun to our moons?” he asks, and Sasuke stills, ducking his head and rubbing an angry hand at his face.

“It’s not impossible,” is all he can say.

“How many of us?” Itachi repeats. “You know the answer. So tell me why mine is so hard to understand.”

“Don’t do this,” Sasuke begs. “You have to at least _try._ ”

Itachi swallows a bracing breath. “I will not die knowing you are close behind, and I won’t leave our parents alone to suffer. Father thinks himself damned. Kaguya’s curse skipped two generations of his family’s men. Funny how it does that, isn’t it? It makes her curse so much more...cruel.”

“Itachi-”

His brother slowly turns his head. “There was always something about you that made the world seem a little easier. It's why I've always looked to you. I need you to stay here.”

Father always said Itachi had a way with words. He said it on the day he pinned a medal to Itachi’s undecorated military uniform, right above his heart. The day his eldest son turned twenty-one, the age the children of the Uchiha give their hearts to the clan. Itachi chose to join the Ninja that day, and after he had spoken, a large war cry echoed through the valley, rising right up to the sun. Sasuke had laughed with his mother, raising his fists to the sky. One day, he knew, he’d follow Itachi. One day, Sasuke would join his father’s Ninja.

_U-CHI-HA_

__

_U-CHI-HA_

The Hokage had attended the ceremony, as all Hokages before him had always done, keeping an eye on the powerful clan who owned a small part of the Fire Country’s map, who owned and commanded a private army and airfleet made up of only clan members, enough to make up a small percent of the Hokage’s war forces. No one ever forgets the Uchiha clan.

Sasuke thinks of that day when he looks down at Itachi, dying on his bed. He always had a way with words, and he knows how to make Sasuke pause. He says it so sincerely, so openly, Sasuke can’t speak.

Ai peeks into the bedroom then, knocking softly. “My lord? I have the water…?”

Itachi holds up a hand and she backs out of the doorway, but not before gently reminding Sasuke he has a duty to fulfill today. People are beginning to arrive. Sasuke turns away from Itachi to pull back a curtain, wincing at the sight outside. Hardly daybreak, and already, hundreds had congregated. He drops the curtain in disgust.

“Don’t be that way, Sasuke. Maybe your sun is right outside,” Itachi jokes lightly, and Sasuke fixes him with a cold glare, immune to his attempt at humor. He scowls. His chest feels tight again, constricted by the enveloping sadness still blooming there, taking hold of his heart like a flower, rooting into his veins.

 

“No,” Sasuke says with a deep breath. “They aren’t.” Saying it leaves him feeling cold, a little breathless.

Itachi studies him curiously. “No, I suppose not," he murmurs thoughtfully, and his brow is creased. He doesn't meet Sasuke's surprised glower, his gaze focused on something Sasuke can't see. Itachi pauses before adding wistfully, “But maybe they _are_ out there. Somewhere you haven’t thought to look.” He’s turned his head away, that faraway look still in his eyes, and Sasuke wonders who he’s thinking about. He steps away from the window to hover by Itachi's bedside.

“I’ll come back later.” He reaches for Itachi’s hand, squeezing it briefly before letting go. “There’s nowhere for me to look. And I’ve never been in love.”  He thinks about his uncle, traveling the world looking for a sun for his very own dying son. He never found one.

Itachi looks at Sasuke then, a strange, knowing smile curling his lips, as if he knows his brother better than Sasuke knows himself, but he’s not about to tell Sasuke his own secrets. “Haven’t you?”

Sasuke shakes his head, a little thrown. “Take the water,” he orders, and Itachi sighs like the world has been placed on his shoulders. Mikoto glides into the room just before Sasuke can reach the door, and she gathers him in a hug before hurrying to Itachi’s bed. Sasuke watches them whisper to each other, Mikoto's hand grazing Itachi's forehead to brush a stray strand of hair behind his ear. Sasuke watches, just for a moment, before he turns away.

Itachi’s words hang in his thoughts, just as ghostly as the memories of his cousin.

The only person Sasuke Uchiha might have ever been in love with once is dead.

 ****  
  
  
  


 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where, oh where, has our little Fox gone? The curse in its entirety will be fully explained in due time. Thank you for reading!


	3. The General's Son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We have a witch. You want to put your faith in a witch.” He says witch like he would say pig. And pigs can’t work miracles.

The curse is waiting in the hall for Sasuke after he closes Itachi’s door.

 

The house is still dark around the corners, trying to wake, the servants bleary eyed but quick through its veins. They move like they’re trying to slap the feeling back into it.

 

He stops walking, every joint in his body stiff when he hears it, and slowly he lifts his head, looking back over his shoulder. He glares at the corners and the canvas oil paintings like Kaguya herself might rise from them. The sweat beading on his skin ices over. Sasuke watches a pair of cooks stride to Itachi’s door, disappear, then poke shining bald heads back out into the hall again. They say, “young lord” like they are one person and hurry off. If the twin cooks hear the music, they don’t mention it.

 

No one notices. No one says anything. No one looks at Sasuke.

 

But Sasuke can hear it, and he cocks his head, listening.

 

The Moon’s lullaby trails through the house in a high, sleepy melody every child in Konohagakure knows by heart. The story of how the curse began. When he was small, Mikoto would sit on the edge of Sasuke’s bed at night, her mouth quirked in a not-quite smile that always made her eyes seem sad, and she would tickle Sasuke if he said so. “You’re just growing up so fast. That’s all,” she told him once. Mikoto would gather him up in her arms, her cheek resting against the top of his head, and she’d begin the story in a whisper. “Once upon a time, a boy in the moon fell in love with the sun.”

 

Sasuke’s mouth runs dry. Goosebumps pepper his skin. He is not afraid. The joints in his bones squeal when he moves, and Sasuke knows he looks steely and dangerous, wound too tight. Another angry ghost in the Uchiha house. When he passes a window Sasuke pauses to look for the crow and count his omens, but the morning is clear and dark and only a nightingale sings. His heartbeat steadies, a slow drum in his ears. A washerwoman nearly drops her basket when he turns, hurrying to vanish in a corner when Sasuke meets her eye.

 

“What could be the matter?” she gossips the moment he rounds the corner.

 

No one will look him in the eye as he drifts from room to room, searching for the music like a panther stalking prey. The melody settles like grime under his skin. Makes him twitch.

 

“...Mikoto’s girl is playing today in the dining room,” hums a servant girl, and Sasuke pauses, lingering behind to stare at the back of her head. He can’t see who she’s talking to, he only sees the rubbed-red knobs of her peeling elbows. “I’ve never heard it like that. Wait’ll you hear her sing-”

 

His anger is starting to pick him raw, and he turns on his heel.

 

He finds the girl playing the piano near the dining room. A villager his mother hired in the spring to keep up the ambiance and glamour of an old money home. The kitchen is a clatter of noise and raised voices as they rush to prepare breakfast. Sasuke can smell miso, taste the salt on his tongue. He stands under the archway.

 

The girl falters when she sees him, her practiced fingers skipping over keys and mutilating the notes until the song ends in a choked-off screech. She stops playing. Everyone stops to look at him. Sasuke stands there like a wraith.

 

His lips peel back to bare his teeth when he talks. “I never want to hear that song again.”

 

The girl pales and she slams her shin against the piano in her rush to stand. Her eyes water as she bows. She keeps her head ducked. “Forgive me, my Lord.” She flinches under his glare until she’s rescued by Hideki.

 

“Ah! Young lord, good morning!”

 

Sasuke doesn’t reward Hideki with a response, or even a look, silently hoping the little man will lose interest and run off elsewhere. It’s a busy day, and Hideki is a busy man. He’s dressed in gold and black today, looking especially bright with a smile that could reach to his ears.

 

“We have a lot to prepare for this morning-”

 

Sasuke is still trying to forget the village girl’s music. His jaw works as he tries to quell a wave of irritation. Hideki is an unwanted companion and Sasuke doesn’t wait to hear the rest. There is one more person he needs to find.

 

“I’m going to see my father first.”

 

Hideki’s smile falters, too bright to be genuine. “Of course. I’ll accompany you,” he offers graciously. Sasuke bites his tongue and looks up at the ceiling as if the patience he’s looking for is hidden somewhere he can’t reach.

 

Mikoto’s village girl waits until Sasuke is turned away before she begins the upbeat Imperial march of the Emperor’s anthem.

 

* * *

 

Sasuke finds his father praying at the shrine. The July heat is always damp and sticky before the sun has a chance to rise, and Sasuke is sweating before he hits the forest trail. Hideki politely lingers far behind, hands neatly folded in his belled sleeves as he watches the Sakura trees. The blossoms fall like rain.

 

The trail swallows Sasuke whole before it spits him out again, and he sees the shrine ahead in a clearing. Sacred ground. Fugaku stands before Kaguya’s shrine. It’s erected near the the thousand-years-old trunk of a Yakusugi tree. Fugaku looks like a sacrifice under the dappled light of the cedar; a man baring himself before the tree that stands guard, a knotted sentinel with roots that trace back to the Spirit Wood.

 

A dark shape lands heavily on the shrine’s slanted roof. Sasuke pauses to look up. Two crows blink at him from their perch. One screeches at him.

 

Incense burns in hazy white trails and Sasuke watches the crows through the smoke, body wound tight. Sasuke remembers his omens. He waits for the curse to follow him here, too. He holds out his hand in front of him, but nothing happens and several seconds pass. His skin stays clear, and there is no goddess Kaguya waiting to drag him down to the underworld. No one else is at the shrine but his father and the shadows in the trees, invisible to the untrained eye. Not monkeys.

 

Ninja.

 

Sasuke looks up. They bob and weave with the shake of the wind through the branches, the scatter of sunlight, hiding in the shadowed corners. They’re not trying too hard; they only want to be overlooked.

 

Sasuke’s heartbeat rushes, a grief-fueled anger riding the pump of blood through his veins with each thrum. He remembers Itachi’s face.

 

“Why do you pray to her?” Sasuke asks finally, and he brings his eyes down from the trees to stare at his father’s back. The cicadas’ song nearly guts his low voice. Fugaku doesn’t look at him.

 

“Quiet, Sasuke.” He bows once, twice, and Sasuke clenches his fists.

 

“Itachi is dying.”

 

Fugaku says nothing. The broad horizon of his shoulders tighten and tense. The silence is deafening.

 

Sasuke’s eyes sting when he says, “She’s killing him.”

 

Fugaku sighs. “That’s enough.” He does not look at his son.

 

Sasuke clenches his jaw until his temples throb dully, and he lifts his head again to gaze up at the ninja in the trees. A good son, his father told him once, knows how to keep himself from saying too much too soon.

 

The ninja stare back at Sasuke through faceless mottled masks. He counts five with narrowed, shrewd eyes. Sasuke wonders if one of them is Kakashi. Goosebumps prickle his skin. He can feel the eyes trained on the back of his neck.

 

“Father-” he starts, softer this time, but Fugaku interrupts.

 

“Pray,” he orders, and Sasuke’s lip curls. He studies his father silently. When he was eight years old Mikoto had told him, “Oh Sasuke, your father isn’t so difficult to understand. You can be just like him sometimes.”

 

He’s wondering about this when the drone of propellers drowns out the forest, and Sasuke watches an Uchiha zeppelin lift into a clear sky. The anger lifts with it, ebbing like a tide, and Sasuke waits until it floats away, swallowed by the canopy overhead.

 

It makes him think of something, someone, but only for a moment, and then it’s gone.

 

“Why?” he asks again, but Fugaku does not answer.

 

After a while Fugaku repeats, “You should pray. This is a holy place.”

 

Sasuke shakes his head slowly. Tentatively, he says, “Maybe there’s another way-”

 

Fugaku cuts him off. “We pray,” he says, and his strict tone is ragged at the edges, “for forgiveness. There is _no other way_ . That is why you will _pray_ for your life _._ ”

 

Sasuke bites the inside of his cheek, and he feels wronged, a bitter stab of injustice that sinks into his guts with a serrated edge. He lets his left foot slide back, exhaling, stuck between staying and turning around. His impatience gets the better of him. “If we invested a little more in the medicine woman-”

 

“A witch,” Fugaku growls, irritated now, and he does not tear his gaze from Kaguya’s shrine. “You mean the witch.”

 

Sasuke’s temper flares. “You didn’t call her a witch when she figured out how to stall the curse.”

 

Fugaku grunts.

 

“Curses can be undone.” Sasuke can feel the excitement building as he says it, flattening the cold weight in his chest. Even with the crows fixing beady, unblinking eyes on him, Sasuke still believes in escape. He stares at the birds defiantly and thinks, _we won’t die. Not yet._

 

He barrels on before his father can do more than grimace. “We have the resources. We have the alchemists, scientists, healers-”

 

“Do you not think I have done all I can for my children?” is Fugaku’s terse reply.  Sasuke chooses not to answer, so Fugaku says coolly, “We have a witch. You want to put your _faith_ in a witch.” He says _witch_ like he would say _pig._ And pigs can’t work miracles.

 

“She could do more. _We_ could do more!” Sasuke argues, but Fugaku roars, “SILENCE!” His dark eyes are are bleak and dangerous, and he’s finally turned to face his son. Sasuke’s words evaporate with the forest mist. He stands there dumbly, too angry to speak. The crows caw, shuffling on the shrine, and Sasuke realizes the clumsy one is a fledgling. The parent crow fidgets, knocking against its child with a wing, and they fly off together, leaving Sasuke alone with Fugaku and his security detail who listen and absorb everything.

 

Sasuke swallows, gathering his thoughts. His stomach knots in an angry coil.

 

This is for Itachi, he tells himself. This is for his brother.

 

He fights the sudden surge of guilt, the memories of a childhood spent loving Itachi as often as he was jealous of him. Of every time Fugaku’s hand came to rest on his older brother’s shoulder in a silent and proud sort of way while Sasuke was still the boy, the General’s son, who couldn’t hold a rifle steady.

 

Now Itachi is dying, and Fugaku is praying to the  goddess who is taking Itachi away.

 

In the trees, Fugaku’s ninja sway with a hot gust of wind, alert and curious, observing the way their General’s son stands. Sasuke wonders if he looks like a threat.

 

He looks his father in the eye unflinchingly, and it’s like staring at a wild animal and daring it to bite. Maybe Fugaku feels that way too, because he stands like a General then, tall and imposing, silently daring his son to say more. His eyes are wide, bright with an anger that Fugaku has never been able to hide very well.

 

“You will not stand there in front of me,” breathes Fugaku, and he bares his teeth with each word, “and accuse me of not doing enough, after all I have done for you, my _son_.”

 

Sasuke is quiet, seething, his shoulders heaving with each breath. Grudgingly, he drops his gaze and bows his head in apology, hands clasped behind his back. After a tense moment of silence he tries again, because Fugaku is still watching.

 

“Father-”

 

Fugaku slices a hand through the air and Sasuke squeezes his eyes shut. “I said _enough._ Where do you get these foolish ideas? Does it come from your instructors? Your mother?” and Fugaku looks older than he ever has before. “You’re not a child anymore, Sasuke. It’s time you stop thinking like one.”

 

Sasuke lets the jab hit him, sink into his skin slow and stinging. He straightens, remembering his brother. His cousin. Others. “Are we supposed to watch our family _die_ year after year and pray that one day she’ll forgive us?” he spits.

 

“I said that was enough.” Fugaku has never sounded more weary. Sasuke thinks of him in his chair in the sitting room, years ago after returning home from war, humming the lullaby and twirling a crystal shot of whiskey, a man sapped of strength just for the night. He was tired then, too.

 

But Sasuke hasn’t had enough. “She’s not a god-”

 

Fugaku’s nostrils flare and he hisses, “Sasuke!” in warning.

 

“She’s a _demon_!”

 

“SASUKE!”

 

Sasuke catches his father’s open hand before it can reach him. His arm shakes as Fugaku instinctively pits himself against Sasuke’s own strength before his father relents, skin and bone all that stand between them. Fugaku stares at his son wild-eyed and angry and wounded, chest heaving. Sasuke wonders if they are still alike. If Fugaku sees himself in the son staring right back at him, because he rips away from Sasuke’s hold but doesn’t stop looking. Sasuke is a pale mirror of his father. Maybe he is more Mikoto than Fugaku (“He has your handsome, aristocratic nose. Your eyes,” Sasuke overheard his mother tell Fugaku once), but he's just as tall, though leaner, smaller and lithe and white to his father’s bulk, square jaw, and summer-brown skin.

 

The ninja in the trees are unnaturally still. Beyond the Yakusugi tree, the forest looms darker. The ancient cedar groans with the wind.

 

Fugaku’s brow knits as if if he’s in pain. “I have already lost a son. I will not lose another.” His voice is hard and unyielding.

 

If Sasuke was younger, he would have taken his father’s words, the look Fugaku is wearing now, and he would have branded it into his memories to revisit again and again, hoarding away the small moments like gold.

 

Sasuke is older now, and there are other things he’s hidden away like gold, buried in the chest of moments he keeps locked away in his mind. But still he locks it away. His chest hollows out.

 

Sasuke says slowly, “Itachi isn’t dead.”

 

Fugaku’s breath hitches, and he turns back to the shrine. “You have a duty to fulfill today. I expect you to be mature enough to do it.”

 

Sasuke doesn’t move. Fugaku’s shoulders rise and fall with a quiet sigh. “That is an order.”

 

Sasuke stands rigid and still, his mind carefully blank when he bows. “General,” he acknowledges, stiff and formal. Fugaku inhales deeply.

 

“You’re dismissed.”

 

Sasuke pretends he doesn’t notice the two ninja who break away from the Yakusugi tree, following his movements as he backtracks. He turns his back to his father and the forest, tucking it all away.

 

Hideki is still waiting by the Sakura trees, and he hurries to stay in step with Sasuke, blinking up at him through round wire glasses.

 

“Our esteemed guests have arrived,” he announces happily. “I trust you’re prepared to receive the Hyuuga?” Under his breath Hideki hums, “the byakugan _princess”_ as if he’s expecting to receive a crowned princess for tea.

 

Sasuke grunts.

 

Hideki beams. “Wonderful, wonderful! If there was ever a clan we needed to do good by it’s the Hyuuga. Gods know the strife between the clans could use a little smoothing over. Thankfully Lord Hiashi was not offended by our failure to entertain his ambassadors yesterday-why it would be callous to fault your illness! We’ll be meeting the princess in private and will see her first before receiving the people, as Lord Hiashi has requested.”

 

Sasuke frowns. Not even the Daimyō requested a private meeting for his children. He turns the words over slowly in his head but doesn’t comment, keeping his eyes on the sprawling mansion looming closer and closer. It’s an old house, rich with traditional architecture, the curve of the rooftops curling upward like the house has century-old secrets hidden in the tatami floors and is smiling about it. Mikoto once told Sasuke she thought the Uchiha house looked like the back of a sleeping dragon, strong and beautiful. She said in the daylight it looked like it was slowly unfurling to stretch out under the sun.

 

 _The roof is its wings, see?_ she’d say. Today, the points of the house look like spikes.

 

“The tailor is waiting for you with a lovely gift for the occasion. And remember, your father expects you to be on your _best_ behavior,” Hideki reminds him sternly, and Sasuke breathes in through his teeth.

 

“Of course.”

  
  


* * *

 

The tailor’s son was hired not only because he looks like someone who dresses royalty, but he sounds like it too. Really, Haku was just a poor boy living and dreaming on a withered farm up near the hills when Mikoto found him, his father fixing work clothes for spare change. But everyone knows that.

 

Haku is waiting on the wraparound porch, soaking in the morning sun near Sasuke’s room in the east wing of the house. He’s dressed in blushing pink to match the cherry blossoms, petal earrings bouncing when he moves.

 

Last week Sasuke saw Haku pressing cousin Mai up against the metal walls inside the airfleet hangar, her legs wrapped around his waist like she didn’t have a fiance. No one knows that. But Sasuke keeps his mouth shut, even when Haku’s cheerful voice grates against his ears.

 

He waves away his father’s nervous lawyer who’s loitering by his bedroom door, eager to talk clan politics, Haku chattering away about the newest Imperial style behind him.

 

The lawyer tries to bow his head respectfully, but he ends up bobbing like a bird. “My Lord, if I may suggest-”

 

“If I needed your advice,” Sasuke huffs arrogantly, “I would have asked for it.” He opens the door to drain the room of the stylists, the advisor waving notecards with pre-written niceties in his face. Sasuke knocks the cards away, leaving them untouched on his desk. The advisor glances at his work woefully, like a pool of his own blood’s been left out to dry.

 

Sasuke snarls, “Out.”

 

They scatter. Haku sticks in the doorway, looking shy and unsure. Sasuke glances at him briefly before waving him away with a tired flick of his wrist.

 

“That’ll be all, Haku.”

 

The tailor opens his mouth, then shuts it. His eyes dart to the closet, where his latest work hangs on the handle, covered neatly with a white sheet.

 

“But-”

 

Haku squirms uncomfortably when Sasuke’s eyes fall on him again. “I can dress myself.”

 

Bravely, Haku lifts his chin. “At least allow me to _show_ you-”

 

“I said that was all.” A part of Sasuke inwardly recoils when he thinks he sounds like his father. Again. He closes his eyes, grimacing, a bitter taste in his mouth.

 

“If need something,” Sasuke continues quietly, “I’ll be sure to ask for you.”

 

Haku’s face burns as pink as his robes. He bows gracefully. “My Lord.” The tailor slides his door closed softly, and Sasuke strides across the room to uncover Haku’s latest work. It’s a kimono. Sasuke brushes a calloused finger over the traditional midnight blue fabric before gently covering it again. He opens the closet door.

 

Lost behind sandals and boots and clothes he’ll never wear again is a sword.

 

The chokutō has been stored away in the corner for too long, lonely and forgotten in the gloom. Sasuke stares at it like it might vanish in a cloud of magic if he looks away. The straight sword’s obsidian hilt and black scaled scabbard wink dully at him. Fugaku calls it Kusanagi, named by the man he plucked it from. He gifted it to Sasuke on his thirteenth birthday.

 

Thirteen is an important birthday as any Uchiha knows. It marks the beginning of a young warrior’s journey.

 

“This sword,” Fugaku had told him all those years ago, “has seen war. Take care of it.”

 

Sasuke has not wielded Kusanagi in six years. His fingers shake when he reaches for it. It’s heavy and durable in his hands. Battle worn. When he was younger he used to imagine the blood that had coated its steel once upon a time, and he would hold it like it was made out of glass. He sets it on the floor and hangs up Haku’s kimono, switching his loosely fitted peasant shirt and riding pants for a plain traveling yukata. He notices his reflection in the mirror when he closes the closet doors. His gives himself a minute to stop and think about what he’s going to do.

 

Sasuke can count on one hand the number of times he has disobeyed his father in the past five years. _You have a duty to fulfill today. I expect you to be mature enough to do it._ Fugaku’s voice drones through his thoughts, strict and severe. When Sasuke was younger, the risk of Fugaku’s wrath, his disappointment, was everything and nothing at once. Maybe it still is. He is the General’s son. No one expects this of him. Sasuke reaches for the straight sword stiffly.

 

Sasuke will not pray for his life, or his brother’s.

 

He straps Kusanagi to his back with light hands, as if it might bite him. But he’s viciously proud of its weight against his shoulder blades.

 

He’s missed it.

 

Naruto would have looked at it, grinned his fighting grin, and he would have said-

 

Sasuke’s breath catches. He hasn’t thought of Naruto in a while. The brawler boy. His heart stumbles before catching up with itself. Frowning, Sasuke rips a cloak from its perch in the closet. Once cloaked, he heads to the door, pausing before he can slide it open.

 

Haku hasn’t left. Sasuke can hear his shuffling footfalls as he paces. Gritting his teeth, Sasuke flings the door open, startling Haku, who nearly jumps out of his skin.

 

“My lord! I-” Haku pauses mid sentence, his face scrunching in confusion until it melts into a look of utter despair. “What on _earth_ are you _wearing?!_ Oh gods, you look like a _stable_ boy. _”_ His hands fly to his head to clutch at the veil of pin-straight chestnut hair plunging down his back. He pulls himself together quickly and rubs at his temples.

 

“It’s alright, Haku. It’s all _alright._ You can fix this. If you can make a _toad_ look like a prince, you can get the young lord into that kimono,” he says serenely, and Sasuke shakes his head. Haku distracts himself easily, so Sasuke knows there’s nothing left to do but merely turn away. Sasuke won’t hear until later that the tailor is hoping for the Lord Hyuuga to notice his work, so it’s an unforeseen annoyance when Haku is not distracted for long. He yelps when he opens his eyes to find that Sasuke is striding away in the wrong direction. Sasuke quickens his steps.

 

“That is _not_ where the Hyuuga are waiting!” Haku cries, bolting after him.

 

Sasuke stops, keeping his eyes ahead, holding the picture of his destination in his mind. He sifts through his thoughts for the right words. He doesn’t look back at Haku. “You will find my mother,” he begins in a slow, even voice, “and tell her I’m running late. When I never arrive, you will tell her you last saw me dressing for the meeting. You never saw me leave.”

 

“My lord, this is _important-”_ Haku starts furiously, but he swallows his tongue when Sasuke looks over his shoulder.

 

“I saw you in the hangar with Mai.” Haku’s face is white and with every word he looks more and more like he is going to vomit. “My father favors her. Like the daughter he never had. I’m sure you don’t want to risk your career over something you _might have_ seen.”

 

Sasuke counts to five before Haku speaks. “I never saw you,” he agrees. He still looks sick, but the graceful bend of his bow doesn’t waver. He retreats quickly, and then he is gone.

 

Sasuke steps forward and it’s easy to disappear.

 

He’s a shadow on the wall _,_ unseen by a harried Kiyoko, who’s trying to call on him for breakfast. He passes his mother alone and rigid like she’s caught in a chill outside Itachi’s room, but when her head turns Sasuke is already gone.

 

He keeps to the walls outside, skipping past armed samurai unlucky enough to be chosen for the day’s procession. He swears under his breath. The whole of Konohagakure seems to surround his family’s property. There’s no way out but through. Sasuke sails over the wall and gate that separates the head family of the Uchiha clan from the rest of their kin, from those lesser than them. A salesman gasps in outrage when Sasuke leaps over him, taking the poor man’s wig with him.

 

“HOOLIGAN!” he shouts.

 

Sasuke weaves through the crowd. No one notices him. The crowds rock like an angry sea, and Sasuke is tossed against waves of tightly rung groups , breaking through only to fight past another wave.  He coughs on dust and dirt, which hangs heavily enough in the air to wash Sasuke’s world over in a brown haze. He spins out of the way of an ox-led cart, rushing past a girl arguing with a friend, and apologizes when they collide. She turns to snap at him, and Sasuke can still feel her eyes on his back yards away. When he looks again, she’s hidden by the crowds, but the feeling remains. Sasuke stops in the middle of the road and is cussed at. He’s called a pickebrained roadhogging assmuncher from a particularly creative little boy, and he laughs, letting out a small breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

 

He’s bounded onto the empty connecting road before he realizes he’s been caught. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end.

 

“I know you’re there,” he calls, and the passing farmer on the opposite side of the road glares at him, cradling the goose in his arms closer to his chest as if Sasuke might snap and steal it. He quickens his pace, grumbling.

 

Sasuke’s patience wears thin. “Kakashi!” he hisses, and then after a thoughtful pause he adds, “and Suzuka.”

 

Nearby, Suzuka swears loudly. There’s a listless sigh from somewhere above him. “I wasn’t really trying. Good guess on Suzuka, though.”

 

Sasuke glares at the surrounding trees. “It’s not hard. She always takes an extra step after landing. Probably why she never moved up from security.”

 

He waves a middle finger at the treeline like a surly little boy after he has to leap away from a deadly pinecone with unnerving accuracy.

 

“Oh, fuck you, Sasuke!” Suzuka growls, jumping down to join him on the road. She’s a second cousin on his mother’s side. Sasuke tries to remember the last time he spoke with her and comes up short. Kakashi’s gray head appears, poking curiously through the branches of the oak he’s hiding in. He’s dangling upside down.

 

“A true Uchiha knows humility,” he chastises, and Sasuke scoffs.

 

“Did my father tell you that?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Sasuke grinds his teeth as his teacher lets go of his hold, landing on his feet.

 

“And where oh where is our little lord off to when he has a pretty Hyuuga girl to entertain?” Kakashi wonders, one eye crinkling in amusement. His face mask hides the irritating smirk Sasuke is sure he’s wearing. Suzuka snorts. Sasuke considers.

 

He settles on telling the truth. “I’m going to find the medicine woman.”

 

Suzuka snorts again. Kakashi sputters, “Tsunade?!” then shakes his head morosely. “You want me to go gray early, don’t you Sasuke?”

 

Sasuke wisely decides not to remind Kakashi that he’s always been gray.

 

“You’ll be eaten by a bear. Kidnapped by bandits. Savagely torn apart by hordes of demons-”

 

“Yes, it’s all very dangerous,” Sasuke agrees gravely. Suzuka barks out a laugh. Kakashi rolls his one good eye.

 

Sasuke gives the pair a withering look. “Are you going to follow me all the way there?”

 

Suzuka waves him off, unconcerned. She pulls down her face mask, fierce underneath the unruly raven hair on her head. “For that, you’re on your own, _young lord.”_ She makes a face. “Security doesn’t pay high enough to follow you into the spirit wood.”

 

Kakashi mulls over his answer, a look in his eye Sasuke can’t place. He eyes his sensei warily, shifting the weight off his right foot, ready to run. Suzuka skirts around them nervously.

 

A shadow crosses Kakashi’s face. His voice is low, serious. “I haven’t seen you act like this since-”

 

Sasuke's anger returns, sharp and searing. “Don’t.”

 

Kakashi’s one eye roves over Sasuke, like he knows something his student doesn’t, and Sasuke ducks his head, not wanting to meet his eye. He thinks of Itachi earlier that morning, giving him the same, drawn out look. For a long ten seconds, Sasuke buries the memory of a familiar smile, ignoring the dull ache that comes with it. Kakashi looks down the road like he’s waiting for someone. He looks like his namesake then, a gangly gray scarecrow left out in the middle of the road.

 

“Don’t cut yourself on that sword,” Kakashi ends up saying gruffly. “Only twenty for two days and already you think you’ve surpassed me.”

 

Sasuke shifts his shoulder blades to feel the weight of the sword settle between them. He can’t stop the grin. “That’s because I have.”

 

“So cocky,” Kakashi tuts, tilting his head as if he can’t decide if Sasuke means it or not, but it’s mirthless. “And what am I supposed to tell your father?”

 

Sasuke’s mouth quirks in the same not-quite smile he’s seen on Mikoto so many times. His heart beats harder. “Tell him the truth. Tell him on my way back to the house I stopped to save a crate of drowning kittens, but they were stolen by a gang of bandits and I had no choice but to pursue.”

 

He leaves Kakashi stock still and gawking, Suzuka doubled over laughing.

 

“I’m so proud…” he hears Kakashi admit.

 

Sasuke smiles.

 

The walk out of the village feels endless. It’s noon when Sasuke reaches the border of the ancient wood that cradles the village. It’s a deer-beaten path veering off a backroad, and at least one carriage stops so the driver can stick a head out the window to ask Sasuke if he understands what’s at the end of it.

 

The Spirit Wood crawls past the valley, running under the shadow of the cliffs like a chip of twilight the sun never reaches.  A crow flies overhead to land on a wooden post staked into the ground. Sasuke freezes, glaring up at the bird, his eyes drifting from its hunched coal-black body to the sprawling characters etched into the sign that hangs below its clawed feet. It reads, _The End._ Keeping a wary eye on the bird, Sasuke steps forward to press a hand over the years-old gashes and tally marks that scar the wood.

 

He knows this post.

 

The summer wind blows, and Sasuke remembers. Seven years ago, when the sky over the cliffs of Konohagakure hummed with a war song.

 

“Betcha I’d last longer,” taunts Naruto, eyes glittering with mischief as he throws a rock into the wood. They’re twelve and thirteen and as wild as ever, skirting the border of the forest but never daring enough to step foot past the trees. Hideki nervously shouts at them from the safety of the bus stop bench he’s sitting on every now and then.

 

Sasuke had gotten bored with target practice, throwing kunai at the post and trying to determine who had made the deeper gash. Naruto was tired of claiming he’d won every single round, and now he’s picking his brain for new contests.

 

Sasuke smirks, watching the brawler boy jump back and shriek when a large toad leaps out of out of the foliage and onto his foot. Naruto blushes beet red, shaking the toad off with a violent swear.

 

“You wouldn’t make it two feet in, dead last.” Sasuke leans back against the post, lulled by the August heat. Naruto bristles at the nickname, something new that was beginning to sneak its way into their practice fights. In the gloaming, Naruto is gold and brown against the fire-bright sky. He’s losing the roundness to his cheeks, and Sasuke notices the stark outline of his collar bones jutting out against his skin.

 

He pretends not to notice, letting his head lean back against the wood and his eyes flutter closed. He opens them, just a little, to watch Naruto under his lashes.

 

Naruto frowns, eyes narrowed, hands stuffed in his pockets. He’s redder than the crimson underbelly of the evening clouds. “Shut up, bastard. That could’ve been a demon.”

 

Sasuke closes his eyes again. “It wasn’t.”

 

“It could have been!”

 

Sasuke opens his mouth to reply, but a guttural roar drowns out what he’s going to say next, and he leaps away from the post, wide-eyed as he cranes his head back to look up.

 

He can feel Naruto walking up behind him, and together they stand shoulder to shoulder, watching the zeppelins and war balloons flock and disappear over the cliffs. Sasuke stops counting after forty.

 

“WHOA!” Naruto tilts his head back and howls, arms stretched wide like all he has to do is jump to be lifted away, and Sasuke can feel it in the marrow of his bones. His shivers, grinning, and opens his mouth to yell.

 

When the sky clears and the roar is a hum on the wind, Naruto looks to the cliffs and says, “Do you think we’ll ever have to go?”

 

Sasuke watches Naruto out of the corner of his eye. There’s something eager and dreadful waiting in the gleam of Naruto’s blue eyes. Sasuke doesn’t want to say yes. So he shrugs. He tries to imagine Naruto in a uniform, carried off to the war they would fall asleep listening about on the radio. The talkshows spoke of a giant of a man, a conqueror who killed with his bare fists.

 

Sasuke remembers his father telling him earlier that year that if the draft was ever reinstated it could pull anyone fifteen and over. “When I was a boy, you volunteered once you hit thirteen.” And Sasuke had tried to imagine his father as a boy, alone on a battlefield. He’d always wondered if Fugaku had ever volunteered, but if he had Fugaku never said. The thought leaves Sasuke restless, uneasy,  remembering his mother adding, “But that won't happen.”

 

Naruto is quiet at his side, his good mood sinking with the sun. His bottom lip is jutting out, a baby-face Kakashi still makes fun of him for. Sasuke tries to shift the weight in his chest. Finally he says, “Maybe. But not you. You wouldn’t last two days.” He looks away to hide his smile, biting down on his lip.

 

Naruto shoves him, but not hard. Sasuke doesn’t lose his balance, and he knows it irritates Naruto every time.

 

“You know that ain’t true!” Naruto scowls even harder, grumbling something about “stupid Uchihas". He watches the forest with darker eyes, slouched in a way that usually has Jiraiya-sensei smacking the back of his head and telling him to stop looking so lazy. Naruto knocks his shoulder against Sasuke’s after a while and says, “I’d still last longer than you in the forest.”

 

Sasuke scoffs, crossing his arms, but he doesn’t say anything. Hideki rises from the bench far ahead, calling for them.

 

“BOYS!”

 

An automatic carriage rumbles down the dirt road, and the boys perk up as Fugaku steps out, telling them to get in, they’re going home.

 

Now the road is empty, and Naruto is gone. Sasuke stands alone by the post. The wind whistles through the trees, and Sasuke knows the sign says _The End_ because it is. He takes a breath, and the small smile he wears is real. “You’re on, dead last.” 

 

Sasuke walks into the wood. He doesn’t look back.


	4. Spirit Wood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wonders fleetingly if the curse and the crows will haunt him even here, but then supposes that’s how curses work anyway.

Evening never grows old in the Spirit Wood, and neither do the four stone faces of Konohagakure’s past Hokages, warlords of a dead age. Their gazes follow Sasuke into the wood with a stare as sharp and unforgiving as Fugaku’s.

Sasuke thinks of his father. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Kusanagi feels heavy against his back. The wood seems to sigh with a hot summer breeze. The bent, crooked trees reach for a sky they can’t touch, and the path that winds through them seems cavernous and forbidding. The forest sighs again, like it’s a living thing. No, it seems to say. Sasuke shivers. He thinks of his brother, and takes another step.

Some days, anger is the only fuel he needs to take another step.

With each step Sasuke takes the trees grow older and more crooked. The shade under the canopy grows denser and blacker until Sasuke is blinking away the shadows curling around the corner, sneaking into the edges of his vision. The darkness sucks away the summer heat, leaving Sasuke to shiver in the unnatural chill. It feels like it’s breathing. In and out with the shift of the breeze.

The Hokages in the cliffside watch Sasuke drift deeper into the wood, until Sasuke begins to imagine his father’s narrow, angry eyes trailing after him. He can almost see Fugaku; bending down on one knee to look him in the eye after taking him into the tangled wood beyond the Yakusugi tree for the first time. Sasuke had been five years old. He remembers hanging over his brother’s bed, pouting, and chanting, _let’s go, let’s go, let’s go_ , over and over and over. Itachi hadn’t wanted to go. At that age Itachi and Sasuke had done everything together, like they would for a while longer, and an Uchiha brother didn’t go anywhere an adventure was to be had without the other. It was like bumbling into the woods without a head. It was like having hands without any arms to reach out with. It was asinine.

“It’s your day,” Itachi had said, not once tearing his eyes away from the assignment the tutor had given him that afternoon. Something boring Sasuke would grow to hate but had dutifully learned about, like Literature Theory or Alchemic Chemistry. “Father already showed me the forest, anyway. I already know what’s there.”

So Sasuke had found himself looking up at his father in the middle of a forest his mother had told him was magic, both excited and nervous, because Fugaku was everything five year old Sasuke had ever wanted to be.

His father had looked up at the sky from the cracks in the canopy and said, “every Uchiha soldier can lose themselves in this wood until they’ve walked enough circles to travel a thousand miles. And still, they would be able to tell north from south just by the location of the sun or the look of the stars.” Fugaku had grinned in a way Sasuke can’t remember him grinning now and laid a callous, work-roughened hand on his son’s shoulder. Hands that had worked and bled like no other General Uchiha before him. Sasuke trusted those hands, just like every person Sasuke had ever seen talk to or watch his father. It was that magic Fugaku had with people that would skip Sasuke and settle over Itachi like a fortune. When people saw Fugaku, heard him speak, they wanted to believe everything he said. And they did. It wasn’t because Fugaku was lively, because he wasn’t. It wasn’t because Fugaku was sociable, because he wasn’t, and it wasn’t because he was chatty and personable, because he wasn’t. It was because when Fugaku spoke it was with the type of bare-faced honesty people liked to say didn’t exist anymore, even if it was something they didn’t want to hear. There was some kind of justice in that, Sasuke supposed. It was because Fugaku was the type of leader who didn’t act like a leader people had to search and hope for. He was already there beside them. Fugaku wept when they wept, and bled when they bled.

So when Fugaku tilted his back to point up at the trees and said that one day, Sasuke would be able to navigate just by the position of the sun and the stars, Sasuke believed him.

“That’ll be you someday,” Fugaku had said, squinting up at the canopy to find the sun. “That’ll be you.” And he’d beckoned Sasuke to follow. There were still things left to see. Sasuke had hopped after him, stepping into each footprint Fugaku left behind, smiling and happy.

There are no footprints to follow now, only the sun, and Sasuke shields his eyes from its weak glare, peeking through the trees until it dots the forest floor like a mosaic. Its own stained glass window of the world hidden above.

Sasuke looks again at the Hokages and wonders, as he stares at the Emperor’s blue lightning insignia stamped onto their foreheads, if they’re turning in their graves. If someone had ever taken them by the shoulder and said, “that’ll be you”. He remembers the morning the Emperor killed the old Fire King. The war had ended on a Saturday morning in April. Sasuke had been training in the yard, his shoulders red with sunburn, a bored, seemingly asleep Kakashi lying in the sand with a book over his face muttering criticisms every now and then. The radio was on, as it had been for months, spitting staticky love songs and war propaganda. Sasuke had paused his kata to run his eyes over the stretch of the estate’s gate in the distance. He angrily willed it to open, to spit someone out.

It wouldn’t. Later, he’d listen to the nation-wide broadcasted prayer that drowned every station for the Fire King’s soul (“may he find peace”). He’d listen to praise and good luck wishes for the new Emperor’s ascension. (“United as one, but with the strength of thousands”) Sasuke had still watched the gate, wondering how one man was going to annex five different countries that had been hostile with each other for generations and rule each one without dying during the first month of his reign and plunging everything back into blood and chaos.

The Emperor never did die, and the gate never did spit any wandering brawlers back inside.

A humid breeze gusts through the wood, and Sasuke clenches his teeth when a bird takes flight overhead, searching for the sky. He wonders fleetingly if the curse and the crows will haunt him even here, but then supposes that’s how curses work anyway. The bird is gone before he has the chance to steel himself and look. He wills the thought away.

He is here for his brother. Sasuke takes another step.

The Hokages watch him go until the trees eat the cliffs, but their eyes continue to peek through the canopy until they slide down the forest’s throat. Sasuke’s almost disappointed to find he can’t look up at them anymore. It feels like he’s lost whatever luck he managed to save and bring with him.

It’s better this way, he thinks. Now he’ll have to stop thinking of his father, angrily but carefully navigating the minefield that is the meeting with the Hyuuga clan. Sasuke wills himself to stop wondering about his father-about what he’s bound to say when Sasuke finally returns, how betrayed Fugaku must feel. Almost as betrayed and afraid as the look in his eye when his son had called Kaguya a demon, Sasuke imagines.

The wood offers no distractions, only silence and shadows, and a never-ending trail. For the first time since he set foot in the wood, Sasuke feels truly alone. It’s quiet, and still, like no forest Sasuke has ever known. He keeps waiting for something to happen the farther he travels, but nothing ever slinks out of the shadows. He wonders if every tale he’s ever heard is a lie, and if he’s disappointed. Sasuke keeps walking.

The trail the people call the Traveler’s Road is supposed to cut right through the wood and end at an inn, but another mile in it starts to thin, become a tangle of undergrowth and ancient roots. Sasuke’s frustration mounts the further he walks, and the further he walks the more wild the path becomes, until it’s hardly a path at all and the surrounding forest feels like it’s reaching for Sasuke, snagging on his clothes. He stubbornly moves forward-because it takes more than a couple miles for Sasuke to admit a navigational error-and he’s not about to lose his own bet, when suddenly a light blinks overhead, quick and bright like a firefly.

Sasuke freezes, squinting into the dark. His heart races. The light is gone now, like a trick of his imagination, and Sasuke waits five agonizingly long minutes for it to return.It doesn’t. He hisses, “dammit” and takes a cautious step, only to come to a fork in the overgrown path sometime later. He stares at it.

Sasuke has never heard of a fork in the Traveler’s Road. He pauses long enough to mull it over, sucking on his teeth in thought. Each path slides down into a different stomach of the forest, disappearing somewhere deep and dark and full of cobwebby mist.

He wonders if the best choice would be to keep going straight, to ignore the new path and keep to the stories he’s heard about it, but he moves in the opposite direction, to the left. It feels like a relief once he steps onto this new path. It feels reckless and dangerous. It feels like something Naruto would have done, not Sasuke, not the General’s son.

He sees the wolves a moment later. Or the wolves see him.

They’re quiet. So agile and careful around this world they have always known that Sasuke doesn't hear them. Not right away. He hears their footfalls first, the quiet crunch of rotted leaves crumbling to dust beneath their paws. Then the soft, panting breaths, and then finally, he sees their eyes in the gloom. Sasuke counts six pairs of eyes glowing like lanterns in the dark.

One snarls at him. It slinks out from behind the shadows it had hidden behind, hackles raised spiky and high in warning, lips pulled back from its canines in a snarl that wrinkles its long, white muzzle. Sasuke traces its sleek outline. Wolves, he knows, cannot naturally reach this kind of height. This beast could press its nose against Sasuke’s forehead if it stepped close enough. The wolf stares at him with moon-gold eyes.

There’s magic in the spirit wood, and everything alive inside thrives off of it, becomes something else entirely. Sasuke knows the stories. He knows spirit woods are old and tangled and wicked. He knows that, in the heart of each one, there’s a tree older than the Yakusugi tree holding vigil over his family’s estate. Older even than time itself. A god among trees, a tree made out the very magic that keeps Konohagakure’s fairytales alive.

Sasuke slowly moves backward, eyes trained on the trees around the wolf, careful not to look it in the eye.

The wolf moves with him, like a tide, its growl like thunder.

Sweat beads over Sasuke’s upper lip. He bites the inside of his cheek as he slowly, so slowly he thinks he can hear his bones creak, reaches for Kusanagi’s hilt. When his fingers close over it the wolf snarls at him again, crouched low to the ground. Its packmates draw closer, curious and battle-hungry.

Sasuke wonders what will kill him first, the curse or the wolf. He can hear the blood drumming in his ears, signing a battle song he hasn’t been able to answer to for far too long.

He slips Kusanagi free from its scaled hilt with a pale gleam and a hiss. The wolf lunges. Sasuke leaps back. The pack watches silently as their leader bounds forward. Sasuke again darts back, slashing at the air with the sword. It’s more of a warning than a cut. The wolf crouches low to the ground, eyes fixed on the point of the sword. They dance around each other, and Sasuke has the impossible thought that this wolf is playing with him. Sasuke is beginning to wonder if he’s facing a wolf or a demon when a voice yells through the mist, “Over here! Over here!”

The wolves are eerily silent for as long as it takes Sasuke’s heart to beat twice, before the pack tumbles away through the dark in a chorus of snaps and play-growls and huffs, their attention stolen from their leader’s fight by something far more interesting Sasuke can’t see. The white wolf growls low and threateningly.

Sasuke holds out Kusanagi. It’s a promise, and the wolf licks its teeth. It snaps at the sword, but makes no move to attack. Overhead, a crow caws, and Sasuke’s heart jumps, his head tiling back. There, in the branches of the tree bending over him, is the crow. He stares at it, wide-eyed, before his gaze narrows suspiciously. It caws again, insistent, and the wolf below turns away with a huffed growl. Sasuke doesn’t look away from it. The crow cocks its head, blinks one glassy eye, then takes flight. Sasuke stumbles after it, losing sight of it as it vanishes into the shadows.

“Wait-!”

“Over here! Over here!” the voice cries again, and Sasuke breathes out a curse, turning on his heel to see the light bobbing overhead. The same bright, waxy-firefly light he’d seen before. The wolf is gone now, but Sasuke is reluctant to turn his back.

“Over here! Over here!”

Sasuke lets himself stand stock still and rigid for only a moment more before he punches another breath back into his lungs and steps backward, too wary to show his back.

“Where?” he hollers, because as far as he can see, there is nothing attached to the bobbing lantern that is hopping toward him closer, and closer, and closer still. Sasuke holds Kusanagi tighter.

It’s no secret that people disappear in the Spirit Wood. Lost or killed or bewitched. Murdered by vengeful forest gods or lulled into the shadows with a smile and a flash of skin by the tricky Kitsune.

“What is a kitsune?” Sasuke had asked his mother once, well before his training had begun, well before he’d ever met Naruto, well before he’d been old enough to understand that his little world made up of only his mother, father, and brother teetered on the cusp of something darker and supernatural and much, much, bigger. Mikoto had smiled, too wide and too happy, and said, “someone magical.” But Fugaku, who had been lingering in the doorway, scowled and said, “a fox” and refused to say anything more about it.

Sasuke knows the stories. He’s heard the rumors-about men and women waking up alone in rags on the side of the road, as if they had fallen asleep while walking, with no idea of how much time had passed. Husbands and wives who’d been missing for years, suddenly aware they’d been led astray after waking in a different place, alone and cold and sad, marching back to their abandoned families in shame.

So now Sasuke is left to wonder what he’ll find once the lantern finally reaches him. What secrets the forest has yet to reveal. He doesn’t loosen his grip on Kusanagi. He remembers every single defensive stance he’s ever learned, and every quick, offensive attack he could possibly use depending on the nature of his opponent. His heart hammers in anticipation.

“Over here!” calls the voice again, and Sasuke lowers Kusanagi when the lantern finally reaches him. It isn’t a kitsune. It isn’t a god or a demon. It isn’t a bandit or a vagabond and it isn’t human. It’s a toad, hopping at least six feet over the forest floor with each jump. A fat red toad. Someone has taken care to tie a bewitched paper lantern to its head so that it sits on the toad like a ridiculous baby bonnet. The toad’s throat pulses, quick, and Sasuke blinks at it.

Somewhere, he thinks, Naruto is laughing at him.

“Over here!” the toad croaks, and up close Sasuke realizes how very un-human it sounds. Sasuke sweeps a dark eye over it, and then over the undergrowth where he knows the wolves are still waiting. Hidden, but there.

“Over here!” the toad repeats, and Sasuke sighs. He takes a step back. The toad croaks and hops away. When he doesn’t move he hears the low, dangerous growl of the wolves, so he takes another step back. And another, until he’s back on the road he’d thought about taking in the first place. He looks back, once more, for the crow, but it’s gone.

“Where-?” Sasuke starts to say, until he realizes he’s alone again. The toad and its lantern have bounded away. He watches it hop away until the light disappears. Sasuke scowls, wondering what game he’s playing. It’s another four miles before he finds the second toad.

“The end!” the little toad croaks when it spies him. It’s sitting patiently on top of a rock, like it’s been waiting for Sasuke for ages. Sasuke frowns. The toad blinks bulbous gold eyes at him.

“The end, the end, the end!” it sings with each puff and pulse of its throat. Sasuke shoots it a withering glare.

“Is that all you can say?”

“The end!”

He steps toward it hunched like a fighter. The toad squeaks in alarm, jumping off its rock to land in a pile of dead leaves. It watches Sasuke closely. Sasuke watches it and waits.

He waits, and waits, until his impatience gets the best of him and he snaps, “Well?”

The toad puffs out its throat and croaks, “the end!” one final time before burrowing itself in the leaves. It peeks cautiously at Sasuke from its hiding place.

“The end…” Sasuke whispers to himself, taking in the road ahead of him, and the wood behind him and all around him. There is no end that he can see. The toad hops free of the leaves and leaps ahead. It doesn’t hop forward until Sasuke takes a step. Warily, Sasuke follows it. Another quarter mile and he finally sees the end: a sign hammered into a tree.

It reads _The Gambler’s End_.

Sasuke allows himself to smile, slow and victorious. The narrow path widens into a road not far up ahead, and even farther ahead, Sasuke can see the inn squatting at the end. There’s a bathhouse with steam rising up to the trees, voices tumbling from open windows. The front door is pushed open, left to gape and pant at the forest’s edge, lamplight spilling into a weedy yard.

Sasuke’s breath catches when he whispers, “looks like I won, dead last.” He hasn’t yet moved when two women walk out of the inn hand in hand. From this distance Sasuke can’t hear what they’re saying, but he notices their heads swivel toward him. They wave a hello he doesn’t hear. One is obviously laughing at him.

Annoyed at the attention, Sasuke takes in his surroundings with a thoughtful grimace, rooting himself in place until he’s found the joke. He notices nothing he hasn’t already seen and wonders what he’s missing as the women disappear into the bathhouse. It nags at him. Something slinks out of the forest undergrowth behind him, and Sasuke tenses.

A familiar toad-voice sings, “the end! The end!” and Sasuke sighs deeply, shoulders drooping. He turns his head to watch the toad crawl up onto a rock jutting out of the earth beside him. It stares at him expectantly. It squeaks at him. Over and over.

Sasuke’s brow furrows. It takes him a moment to connect the dots. The woman laughing at him. The toad with the lantern calling to him and the toad waiting for him on the boulder. The inn sitting in the middle of a demon forest without so much as a fence to protect it. The toad doesn’t stop squeaking.

He swears at himself and unsheathes his sword, pointing it forward experimentally. A tongue of flame ripples like magma across the invisible barrier in front of him, trailing after the sword’s tip. The sight unsettles him, prickles his skin in goosebumps. If he hadn’t paused here to think-he collects himself, an embarrassed anger flickering behind his ribs. He’s trapped on the outside.

The toad makes another chirping sound. Sasuke watches it. It chirps like a telephone. Sasuke raises a brow.

“What?”

The toad stares at him. It chirps again. Reluctantly, Sasuke bends forward. He says, “Let me in.” He waits. The toad keeps staring. Nothing happens.

Hovering a little closer, Sasuke repeats, “I said, let me in.”

The toad opens its mouth. Sasuke stares down its pink throat, unsure of what to expect. Not a second later he hears the loud, impatient voice of a woman erupt from the toad’s unmoving mouth. Sasuke cranes his head back with a grimace.

“Who is it? Who’s there? Whatchu want?” The woman crams three questions into one breath.

Sasuke hesitates, before awkwardly bending toward the toad. “In,” is all he says. Ten seconds pass. His fingers curl until his hands ball into fists.

“Hmph. That all you want? You meeting someone? Speak!”

Sasuke pauses to weigh his options. He could say no one, but a someone looking for no one wandering a wood like this one would make the most trusting person think twice, even for an innkeeper running a place called The Gambler’s End. He considers saying Tsunade. Though there’s no telling if the medicine woman is even at the inn, or has ever been. All Sasuke has are half-secrets, bits of gossip. An angry tirade he overheard once. 

Yoshi had been raving to Hideki about how the garden, and the Uchiha family’s good money, had gone to waste on the antics of an alcoholic witch. An alcoholic witch, Yoshi claimed, who dealt in crime and illegal gambling under the table, if the places she frequented had anything to say about her character. In Yoshi’s experience, that often said a lot.

“Who even goes to such seedy places?” he’d thundered, looking as blustery as the sky had that morning. “Criminals, that’s who! And how does she repay our hospitality? SHE LETS HER PIG RUN RAMPANT AND EAT MY RADISHES! MY GARDEN IS RUINED!” Hideki had only wrapped a reassuring arm around his husband (after tripping over Yoshi’s garden equipment while Yoshi effortlessly caught him like a reflex, not once losing the rhythm of his complaining) and Sasuke, bored of the conversation, had drifted away.

So Sasuke finally says, “Tsunade.”

The woman on the other end laughs viciously. “That old witch? Have you come to pay her debt? You her loan shark? That fool owes me money! I better get paid tonight. My son’s a banker and he knows lawyers, so you think long and hard before being a punk.”

Surprised, all Sasuke can manage is a flat, “What?”

The innkeeper ignores him. “Follow Bobo.” The toad’s mouth nearly closes before the innkeeper reconsiders, and the toad’s wide mouth opens again for her to add in a rush, “You’re alone right? Not burned? I’m not responsible for untimely deaths or disfiguring burns if you haven’t got the sense to be careful in a magic forest. I got a legal waiver for the barrier seal and an alchemy license, so you can’t sue me! You or yours burn it’s your own damn fault for being stupid!” The toad snaps its mouth shut.

Sasuke leans away from the toad, that old embarrassed anger tickling his ribs. The toad looks at him disapprovingly. Sasuke glares at it. “What?”

The toad blinks and hops off the rock. The barrier opens with a hiss. It’s large, larger than Sasuke had guessed it was, and he can’t see the end of it on either side of him as it ripples like a mirage rising in a summer heat around the entire property. A Sasuke-sized hole is waiting for him, clear and crisp to the other side.

Sasuke steps through nimbly. The moment he does, the toad, Bobo, croaks a hearty, “Welcome, welcome, welcome,” and jumps back out. The barrier seals shut. Sasuke hears a sizzle and a pop, like oil on a frying pan. The proof of the barrier melts away.

A small old woman hurries out of the inn. “Come inside, come inside!”

Sasuke is reminded of Kiyoko by the briskness of her pace, but this woman is stouter, wider, her green eyes critical and tired but lacking Kiyoko’s no-nonsense severity. She doesn’t resemble Kiyoko at all up close, and Sasuke wonders uneasily what’s happening back at the estate.

“You burned? Nauseous? Woozy? No? Good. Come inside before you catch your death.” She turns on her heel and Sasuke hurries after her.

“Where can I find-?”

“You staying overnight? You want a room? You want dinner with that? Well too bad, you missed it. My wife is the best cook this side of Konoha, you know. If you wanna leave before checkout in the morning you go wait at the south end of the barrier. Call for Bobo. He’ll let you out again. If you’re stupid. If you wait for morning there’s always a carriage that comes by. I guarantee you’ll live if you wait for the carriage at checkout. You’re walking on the gods’ territory now, don’t forget it. Not my fault if you go missing or die.”

She ushers him through the door. Inside, the inn’s filled to the brim. Suspiciously cloaked travelers sipping tea, raucous bandits singing ballads, one group having what appears to be a haiku battle, old drunks snoring. It’s warm and sticky and smells of sweat and salt and meat.

“Tsubaki!” The innkeeper shouts, and Sasuke notices an older, slender woman tending the bar. She looks up from her task and raises a thin eyebrow. Bent over before her in a crumpled heap on the bar table, a drunk asks her for more sake. Sasuke eyes his curiously long white hair.

“Ma'am,” he slurs, and Tsubaki patiently listens, “anyone ever tell you how pretty you are? Like a good wine, you become lovelier and lovelier with each passing year-” he yelps when the innkeeper swats him over the head with her apron, harsh like a whip, which she had quickly untied.

“YOU’RE GONNA KILL ME, MOMO!” he wails, covering his head.

“That’s my wife, you drunk old fool!”

“Is it?” he squints up at the woman behind the counter, slaps a hand to his forehead while his eyes grow wide and says, “ah! Tsubaki! How are you, my dear?”

“Lecherous toad,” Momo swears. Tsubaki shakes her head fondly, digging a clean cloth into a cup to dry it.

“No more for you, Jiraiya,” Tsubaki tuts, and Sasuke’s blood freezes. The drunk turns his head to complain to Momo, and Sasuke can make out the long hook of a familiar nose. The world seems to tilt out of balance, slow and uneven, and Sasuke doesn’t realize Tsubaki and Momo are looking at him until Jiraiya’s head turns, too.

They stare at each other.

“Well? You deaf now? Hmph! Tsu, will you please scrounge up this poor fool what’s left of dinner?”

Jiraiya has not torn his gaze from Sasuke. He studies Sasuke with a hint of disgust, like he’s just found a cockroach hiding under his shoe. Sasuke bristles, meeting his eyes in a challenge that Jiraiya laughs off with a wave of his hand, like Sasuke is no more than a little boy brandishing his wooden sword again. He turns back to his empty shot glass.

“Everything alright, dears?” Tsubaki looks expectantly at Sasuke as she leans over the bar on her elbows, slipping Momo’s hand in hers. Momo is studying Sasuke with a critical eye again, and he pretends he hasn’t noticed.

Jiraiya mutters, “don’t you fret, Tsubaki,” so she turns to Sasuke and says kindly, “There’s a little something left. I’ll go heat it up.”

Momo’s harsh expression softens like butter. She smiles in a slow way that makes Sasuke think it’s an expression only for Tsubaki, and he looks away from them.

Momo smiles craftily. “Guess who this fool is looking for,” Momo gossips before Tsubaki can hurry off. Tsubaki hums in answer, waiting, when Momo blurts, “Tsunade!” before cackling. Tsubaki hums again, but Sasuke doesn’t miss the slight frown pulling at her mouth.

“You better pay up tonight!” Momo cries with a loud laugh, pausing just long enough to kiss Tsubaki’s knuckles before hurrying off. Tsubaki promises to be quick and disappears into the adjoining kitchen.

Jiraiya belches, and Sasuke crosses his arms to wait.

“Well, you are the last person I’d expect to find out here,” Jiraiya muses. Sasuke exhales through his nose, but says nothing.

“Could have sworn,” he continues lightly, “that you had noble duties to fulfill, if Kakashi’s letters are anything to go by. Hmm. Find a wife, or a husband, whoever can make that curse mark disappear.” He swivels around in his seat, thick brows knit together. “But that’s the thing isn’t it? No one’s ever seen what actually makes it disappear. So you got your nobles trying to trick their way into fortune and most importantly, you got your middle and lower class desperately trying to come up with the answer to what makes the sun to their Lord Uchiha’s moon. Maybe they die in the process, orbiting around you. And still, no one’s ever survived that curse, except by favor.” Jiraiya twirls the wine in his glass thoughtfully. Sasuke has only seen Jiraiya drunk once, and it had gone a little something like this. He'd been morbid and thoughtful and full of cynical wisdom that Naruto had laughed too loudly at.

Sasuke sneers. He thinks of Itachi, alone in bed and draped in shadow, the skull creeping over his brother’s face like a plague. Sasuke's stomach plummets.

“You know that’d make a great story,” Jiraiya says after a moment. “And I was sitting here thinkin', what the hell am I going to write about next? Can’t make a livin’ if I can’t spit out stories.”

His gaze is steely, the line of his mouth flat and unamused. Sasuke’s fists clench.

“But,” Jiraiya rambles on. “Life of a writer’s a hell lot easier than that of a ninja.” He says this bitterly, and Sasuke turns to him, his lip curled.

“You always talked too much.” He doesn’t say _sensei_ , and savors the stony look on Jiraiya’s lined face.

Jiraiya meets his gaze, wrathful and grieved, and Sasuke can feel the charge in the air, the battle-song, the blood rushing like a river current right through him singing, _fight, fight, fight_. Tsubaki plops his plate of foot in front of him with a flourish, and Sasuke draws his eyes away from his old teacher.

“What are you even doing out here, Sasuke?” Jiraiya wonders. “You should go back home. Save what little life you have left trying to save it. If he were here,” and Jiraiya snorts a dry laugh, “hell if he were here I know Naruto’d be dragging you out by your hair if he had to.” He laughs again in spite of the bright gleam in his eyes that has Sasuke looking away from him to study the rings in the wood of the bar table. “Hell, he would have told you the same. Damn. Thing. Gods above know he did all sorts of shit for you. Stupid kid.” He sniffs loudly. “Yet here you are. Told him he was a damn fool, but no. No one's got time for the old timers.” He sounds tired. He shakes his head and drags a heavy hand over his face.

Sasuke’s blood runs cold.

Jiraiya rises from his seat, the stool squealing on the floor. He slaps a tip on the table and grumbles, “Don’t get your hopes up, kid.” Then he slips away, as quiet as the ghost he had been in Sasuke’s memories for years. Sasuke is frozen in his seat, hands clenched, mouth dry.

The inn’s doors snap wide open then, and a wild woman stalks through the door. Sasuke leaves his food untouched to watch. Her brown hair settles in a short tangle over her head, each side of her face painted with one long red streak, like a claw ripping over her skin. She's a soldier dressed in fur and leather and steel, her heavy fur cloak broadening her shoulders. She tips her head like she’s drinking in the bar, her nostrils flare, and Sasuke looks away the moment her head turns. She’s watching him, he knows. He can feel the burn of her gaze on his back.

“MOMO!” she barks, and even her voice is wild, gutted and sharp like she never speaks in anything less than a scream. Three young men trail in behind her, just as wild as she is, a nervous middle aged man between them. One of the boys pushes their charge forward, and the older traveler scurries off with a terrified, “thank you!” The boys snicker. Their eyes find Sasuke’s then, and Sasuke sees the hooked corners of their mouths, the points of their teeth when they smile. They point and elbow each other and jeer.

One of them starts to saunter over, a laugh still on his lips, when a hand claps Sasuke’s shoulder and yanks him to his feet with a bruising strength he’s witnessed only once before. He rubs at his shoulder with an angry wince.

Behind him, Tsunade growls, “Upstairs. _Now_.”


	5. The Witch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What’s out there?"  
> Tsunade smiles as she says, “a demon.”

Tsunade’s iron grip is rumored to be strong enough to shatter bone, and for the first time in four years, Sasuke wonders if he’ll break one.

 

Itachi had warned him.

 

Sasuke remembers rain on the morning Itachi’s moon had appeared bruised and cold on the palm of his hand. The Uchihas’ old money home had been full of movement and voices and gray corners, like the world outside.  Itachi clung to it like a wraith, pale in the shadowed corner of his room, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. Sasuke waited with him in the gloom as the healer bowed, packed his bag, and left. He listened to the harsh whispers in the hall.

 

 _“He’s hired a_ witch!” hissed the healer to his apprentice, like it was a dirty word. “ _Our_ services _are no longer needed!”_

 

“I heard,” Itachi said suddenly, as the door snapped shut and Sasuke flinched with it, “that this woman can snap your spine in two with one try if you make her angry enough.” Sasuke paused, looking back toward his brother, away from the door. Itachi snapped long, thin fingers, rubbing his fingertips together.

 

Sasuke listened to the rain, to the voices in the hallway, then said, “Don’t piss her off then.” Itachi smiled and huffed a quiet laugh. He looked at Sasuke out of the corner of his eye, then pointed at his younger brother, like they were small again, and he was teasing.

 

“I could say the same for you.” The cold tip of his finger knocked against Sasuke’s forehead, and he pushed his brother’s hand away. He knew this gesture; Itachi was silently asking him to leave, already growing distant in his thoughts, somewhere Sasuke couldn’t follow. Sasuke looked to the door again, and he felt that there was someone waiting beyond it. He could feel her presence before he heard her voice-

 

“I don’t know _what the_ **_hell_ ** you were thinkin’ comin’ here, Uchiha, but this is the last time I’m gonna see you outside the estate, got it?”

 

Sasuke swears as Tsunade’s fingers twist over his arm like a vise, shoving him through the crowd in the bar. The Inuzuka boys are still watching, amber eyes bright and wild. One hops onto the bar counter to peer over the crowd, crouching like an animal while Momo hollers, “GET _DOWN_ FROM THERE, YOU BEAST! _”_

 

Tsunade sneers. “Seven hells,” she hisses, and when Sasuke throws an angry look over his shoulder she pushes him roughly forward.

 

“Walk. Go left.”

 

Sasuke bristles, turning on his heel, Tsunade looming two steps behind. He hangs his head low as they pass a hopeful group of gamblers babbling about the inn’s casino. He obediently turns when Tsunade spits, "right."

 

The hallway is empty, washed out in ruddy light and lazily spinning dust motes rising from the carpet eating the hardwood floor. Sasuke pauses to look at the painted room numbers. Tsunade slaps him over the head, and he swears through clenched teeth, his eyes watering.

 

“And I’ll hit ya again,” Tsunade snarls. In the quiet of the hallway she seems even larger than before, tall and imposing, built like a fighter. “ _Stupid_ boy. Well good for you, Uchiha, the forest spat you out _alive_. How’d you get so far without something angry picking you off, hmm?”

 

Sasuke ducks another vicious swat, his brain kicking him into a fighter’s stance. He redirects the next hit Tsunade aims at him. She’s fast, and the weight behind her hand is impressive. He grits his teeth. Tsunade harrumphs, shaking her head. Her gaze dips and pivots back to his face, her lip curled.

 

“Get walkin’.”

 

He scowls. This is for his brother, he reminds himself, and his gut churns as he imagines Itachi swathed in the shadows of his room. Kaguya’s curse doesn’t wait for pride. Sasuke remembers his father looking him over one morning too many summers ago, saying, _keep your shoulders straight, Sasuke._ Don’t _frown. A respectable man not only acts like he commands respect, he looks it._ Sasuke straightens his shoulders, smooths his scowl, and relents. Tsunade’s lips quirk, her eyes creased at the corner with a sly smile. She looks then like a witch out of one of Mikoto’s fairy tales.

 

“Well?” Tsunade huffs.

 

Sasuke exhales, considering her. There is something extraordinary about witches. Something that isn’t demon-like, or god-like, and something that isn’t human-like either. It’s what keeps Tsunade’s skin youthful, what grants her _magic_ most alchemists and healers take years to channel and perfect, or can’t at all. Something ancient and powerful lying in wait alongside her body’s natural energy, her chakra.

 

Itachi needs extraordinary.

 

Sasuke starts walking.

 

Tsunade scoffs, like his silence answers all her questions. She slips ahead of him, stopping after another turn to the right to lead him toward end of the narrow hallway. There is a door hidden in the shadows of the corner, the lights mounted on the paneled walls flickering and weak.

 

Tsunade throws a look over her shoulder before unlocking it, turning to grab Sasuke’s sleeve. She shoves him ahead of her, and as the door slams shut behind them Sasuke finds himself waiting in the dark. The room smells like stale tobacco and wine. There’s a crash, and a curse, before candlelight washes Tsunade’s boxed-in room aglow. A desk littered with empty wine bottles sits by the room’s only window, light from a lonely old-fashioned oil lamp trying to break past the bottle glass. An unmade bed that’s seen better days is pushed up against a corner. Tsunade stomps over to it to sit. She doesn’t say “have a seat”. She sinks onto the mattress with a put-upon sigh. Her manners have always offended Yoshi more than anything else.

 

“What do you want?” She fishes out an unfinished bottle of sake from under her pillow and pops it open.

 

Sasuke looks back to the door. Even hallways away, he can hear a howl, roguish and human.

 

“Over at the bar-”

 

Tsunade cuts him off, ripping the bottle from her lips. She spills sake over her fingers. “Inuzuka clan. Keepers of _half-gods_ .” She sneers as she spits out the word _half-gods._ “Those damned wolves. Momo pays ‘em to send human travelers the inn’s way. Sometimes they actually find some poor lost sap.” She laughs in her throat. “Better hope Tsume hasn’t already sniffed you out.”

 

Sasuke’s brow furrows. He waits for Tsunade to speak, to answer his unasked questions. She only drinks, so he watches the lamp on the dresser in the corner flicker, nearly die, then flicker again. Tsunade belches, slapping a fist to her chest. Her eyes water.

 

“So before they come sniffing down the halls I’ll ask you again: What. Do you. Want?” She takes a another swig of sake, and when she sets it down on the floor, Sasuke takes a breath.

 

“I want you to stall my brother’s curse.”

 

Tsunade sighs, mumbling something violent under her breath. She leans back against her pillow. “I can’t.”

 

Heat prickles along Sasuke’s skin, behind his ribs, that flame of anger burning brighter. “I’ve seen what you can do-”

 

Tsunade waves him off, reaching down to set her bottle on the floor after a pause. “I don’t interfere with last wishes.”

 

“You can’t do it?” Sasuke spits, "or you won't?" Tsunade looks at him with a strange half-smile. “You can’t expect me to believe you actually _care_ about his last wishes.” He thinks of his father, his mother, alone in the hall after quietly ordering Kiyoko to fulfill Itachi’s wish of being bound to the bed whenever he was alone. It was, Itachi had said, because he didn’t want to risk experiencing weakness in his last moments. Kaguya never came to the weak-willed.

 

Sasuke’s chest aches. His hands shake, and his skin feels too tight, like it can't contain him. 

 

“Or do you only put on a show for my father?” He kicks at a bottle on the floor. Tsunade watches it roll under the bed, her eyes bright.

 

“Get the hell out of my room before I call the dogs.” She throws an arm over her eyes.

 

Sasuke toes another bottle and imagines crushing it beneath his foot. He can’t leave. Not without magic.

 

Tsunade lifts her arm to glare at him. “I said _get lost_ , kid.”

 

Sasuke doesn't flinch away from her gaze. His heart beats hard in his chest. “Whatever you need. Name it, and it’s yours.”

 

Tsunade snorts, looking him over. “Look at you, talking so big. You’re only a second son. What can you give me that your father can’t give tenfold? Fugaku’s a righteous man. I’m only there because your mother _begged_. He wouldn’t risk his clan’s future with the fury of god. He doesn’t expect me to cure _shit_. Only to make it easier.”

 

Sasuke stares, unable to think beyond the drum of his heartbeat. He can hear it in his ears. A _whoosh_ like a river current against his temples. He looks away, ashen, a cold pit in his chest.

 

“I got nothin’ more to say, kid. Nothin’ to give.”

 

He smothers a fearful anger that leaves him feeling cold again, his jaw clenching, his fingers twitching with the need to rescue this last attempt at his brother’s life. There’s a slight weight settled inside a hidden pocket in his left sleeve, something he’d hidden away the night Kaguya’s curse marked him. He hadn’t known what to use it for then, if he ever would. It was the only night he’d allowed himself to feel true terror at the thought of death. He’d imagined leaving. Boarding one of his father’s zeppelins. He sighs, ignoring Tsunade’s glower. His right hand slips into his left sleeve. Tsunade tenses, then laughs, long and loud, when Sasuke reveals a roll of bills.

 

“What if we made a bet?”

 

Tsunade’s grin widens.

* * *

 

The casino squats behind the inn, sprawling over unearthed rock, forest roots, and weeds. Tsunade is still laughing.  She whisks Sasuke out a back door by the kitchen, and Sasuke can hear the Inuzuka woman laughing and howling even when Tsunade closes the door. She skips through the dark yard, over each rock and root like a part of her is buried in the land so she can’t forget.

 

“Not even that money you brought will cover my debt,” she cackles, “and you just offered to pay it all off if I win! You know this isn't the only casino I play at, right?” Sasuke scowls, willing away the sliver of doubt that trickles its way into his thoughts.

 

“You’re gonna wish you hadn’t gambled!” Tsunade opens the door for him with an exaggerated _after you_ gesture that leaves Sasuke swearing under his breath as he steps inside. The casino isn’t so much a casino as it is a large, gutted-out house, tatami floors still pristinely intact. Maybe once upon a time it had been something grand, rich even. Now it’s sparsely furnished, the long, wide hallways each leading to a different room with a different game. There’s a bar in the old kitchen, but no one’s sitting at it. The bartender’s dozed off on a stool, drooling on the counter. The noise of the gamblers settles over the house like the constant buzz of a hornet, and Sasuke wonders which door Tsunade will lead him to.

 

They pass an elderly patron digging through his coin purse. He looks to Sasuke as they pass, blinking owlishly at Tsunade and shaking his head.

 

“You there!” he calls, pointing at Sasuke. “Young man! You aren’t going to _gamble_ with this woman are you?” The old man roots himself in the middle of the floor, and a few players shout at him for blocking their way. Sasuke flicks his gaze over to Tsunade, who purses her lips.

 

“Having a bad night, Haru?” Tsunade wonders, a hand on her hip.

 

“Poor boy,” Haru says dramatically, as if he hadn’t heard, “If she’s taking where I think she is, it’s the only game she’s got any luck with. I’d make a run for it if I were you.” He wanders over to pat Sasuke’s arm and stage-whispers, “She loses at everything else! A bit unnatural to have luck that bad, I say-”

 

“HARU!” Tsunade snarls, and the little man scurries away with a squeak.

 

“Hold onto your coin purse, boy!” he cries, darting out the door. Sasuke frowns after him.

 

Tsunade crosses her arms once he’s out of sight, her chin lifted. “Easiest damn money I might ever make. We can’t be long too long though. Shizune thinks I’m _resting._ Ha! If you want to back out to save some face, now’s the time to do it.”

 

Sasuke grits his teeth, and Tsunade only laughs. She claps him on the shoulder, like an old comrade, and Sasuke bites his lip as he grounds himself. She grips his shoulder with bruising strength before leading him down the hall.

 

Down the hall they go, further, and further still, taking a sharp left at the end. They pass the same, large group of gamblers from the inn, slowly migrating from room to room.

 

“We better hurry. We wanna finish our game before we get stuck with them.” Tsunade suddenly slides open the first door to her right with enough force to unsettle the dust in the hallway. The people inside jump.

 

“Ohhhh, Kenmaaa!” Tsunade sings.

 

Kenma is a bent old man with a thin face. He sits on his knees on the tatami floor, ink flitting over his bared chest in the snarl of a dragon. He squints at Tsunade, rubbing at the peppered stubble on his chin. “You,” he growls, wetting his lips before coughing over the dice. Sasuke wrinkles his nose.

 

Itachi’s fate is to be determined by a game as simple as _chō-han_ _._ Even luck as bad as Tsunade’s has a chance to turn around here. Sasuke can feel his palms begin to sweat.

 

“Me,” agrees Tsunade serenely, yanking Sasuke to his knees on the floor alongside her. The two other gamblers stare, the woman looking morose.

 

“It’s not a good night,” she says. Her companion whimpers.

 

“It’s a VERY good night.” Tsunade rubs her hands together, and Sasuke thinks she looks too much like a cat with a mouse between her teeth. Kenma waits patiently.

 

“I want a game,” Tsunade gestures to Sasuke, “just between us. Best two out of three.” Her smile is sharp.

 

“Got nothin’ left anyway, and this was our last game,” mutters the young man next to Sasuke. The woman beside him sniffs.

 

Kenma shakes his bamboo cup, the dice inside rattling. He upends it, smacking the cup down on the mat in front of him. He looks up at Sasuke expectantly. “What’s it gonna be, boy?” he rasps.

 

Sasuke swallows his doubt. “Odd,” he says, and pulls out the neatly folded wad of bills from his  sleeve. Kenma licks his lips as Sasuke plucks a quarter of it from its hold and sets it down on the mat. Tsunade wriggles on her knees. She reaches into the folds of her shirt to pluck a single bill out from under her breast. She lets it fall, and Sasuke watches it flutter down to the pile.

 

“Even,” Tsunade hums.

 

Kenma lifts the cup to count the sum, and Sasuke’s stomach sinks. “Even,” Kenma growls. The onlookers begin to drink.

 

“Breakfast’s on me if duckbutt wins.”

 

The woman laughs. “Don’t make bets you can’t pay up on, Shinichi. I’ll order the most expensive thing on Momo’s menu.”

 

Tsunade hoots, rubbing her hands together. “Hell I’ll buy everyone in the kitchen breakfast tomorrow if this kid wins!”

 

Kenma shakes his bamboo cup once, twice, then slaps it down on the mat, waiting for a bet. Tsunade gestures to Sasuke.

 

With cold fingers, Sasuke pulls away another quarter and sets it down. “Odd,” he says again, trying to be louder than the heartbeat in his head. Tsunade grins, snatching another crumpled bill from the cradle of her breasts. She smooths it with a snap.

 

“Even,” Tsunade repeats. Kenma removes the cup to reveal the dice, and Tsunade swears viciously. Sasuke smiles, honey-slow.

 

“Odd,” says Kenma, with a razor-sharp grin.

 

“Ooooohhhhh,” says the couple. Sasuke releases another breath.

 

Tsunade smooths another bill. “Don’t get cocky, kid, you only got one more shot.” Across from them, Kenma shakes his cup.

 

“If I win,” Sasuke whispers, and Tsunade forgets about her crinkled bill to glance at him with narrowed eyes. She snorts, short and mean.

 

“If I win, you’re going to _cure_ my brother.”

 

Tsunade laughs, maybe from the impossibility of it. “Uchiha, if you win-” Tsunade jabs at Sasuke with a manicured finger, her voice dipping low, “I’ll tell you how to kill a god.”

 

Sasuke’s blood runs cold. The noise in the casino seems to dip and whine, bleeding away until all that’s left is the beat of his heart. Tsunade is still smiling, like it’s a game she’s already won. Before Sasuke can stop himself he says, “No one can kill a god.”

 

Tsunade’s smile never falls as she calls out, “Odd.”

 

Sasuke inhales deeply before setting the last of his money on the mat. “Even.”

 

Kenma reaches for the cup with an arthritic slowness that makes Sasuke grit his teeth. The cup lifts, and Sasuke’s eyes widen. The room seems to hold its breath, like it's about to jump over a cliff.

 

“Odd,” says Kenma, and Sasuke can feel the breath leave his body with the old man’s laugh. Tsunade smacks Sasuke on the back twice. He winces.

 

“Good game, kid,” she cries. She reaches over to shake Kenma’s hand, knocking over the bamboo cup as she lunges forward. Sasuke stares, too aware of Tsunade’s laughter, of the hollow pit in his gut.  The cup rolls to a stop and rests against his knee. The door to the room slides open, and the loud laughs and voices of the tourists slip inside before they do. Suddenly the room is filled from corner to corner, and Sasuke is being jostled aside. An old man is standing before him.

 

“Move! Respect your elders and all that, boy!” laughs the old man, and his foot knocks away the cup. He’s too drunk to notice or care, only laughs harder, pulling a giggling woman down to the floor with him. He reaches into his coat pocket to shake a small velvet pouch.

 

“My lucky dice!” he says, holding it beneath the woman’s nose, “give ‘em a little kiss, sweetheart.” The cup rolls away as the woman giggles.

 

Sasuke reaches it, and as his fingers close around it, he can feel the shift of the dice inside. His whole body freezes, and his heart leaps. He chances a look at Kenma, who is still listening to whatever Tsunade is telling him with a stony look, ignoring the questions of all his new players.

 

Sasuke falls back as Kenma warily looks over the heads of the gamblers. Slowly, keeping out of sight, Sasuke presses against the wall, the cup behind his back, his fingers probing for a cheat. His heart races, faster and faster with each second that drains away. At first there’s nothing unusual about the cup. No small grooves or buttons or anything to show him that it’s not what it seems. Yet Sasuke can _feel_ the dice shifting inside. His frustration climbs higher and higher, until he feels cold all over again. The backs of the gamblers in front him have formed a wall, and Sasuke chances a look at it. It’s empty. Brown and round and nothing special. Desperately, he looks up again, over the shoulders of the gamblers’ wall, and notices that Kenma is searching. He grips the cup one final time, his thumb ghosting over the bottom, and it suddenly gives way like a button. A die falls to the floor, materializing out of thin air.

 

It lands on eight. His heart pumping harder, Sasuke presses the bottom again, and another die falls by his feet. Five. An odd outcome. Curious, he drops the dice back inside and releases them again, one by one. The sum, this time, is even. Sasuke’s brow furrows. Once more, and it’s odd. The next, even. It’s a mean little trick-it shifts and changes with each fall, but there’s a pattern to the sums. That old anger begins to burn again in Sasuke’s chest. He finds Tsunade at the back of the room, leaning against a wall. Magicked dice. He stares at the bamboo cup, rolling it over in his hands. It's one of the more perfect illusions Sasuke has ever seen, and he’s only seen two up close: the illusion that hides an airship at night, and even then a practiced eye might be able to find its shadowy shape drifting through the sky, and the one hiding the protective barrier of the very inn and casino he’s sitting in.

 

Kenma’s eyes find him then, and his disinterested look becomes hard and suspicious, but Sasuke is quick on his feet. The old man up front is trying to bribe Kenma to use his own dice, making a show of dropping them to show they aren’t a cheat. He throws them too hard and they bounce away. He scambles after them while the group laughs, cursing as he combs the floor. He’s even more surprised when he stumbles into Sasuke, who holds out his hand, two dice in his palm. The old man rips them from him.

 

"I'll take those!"

 

Sasuke smiles, and pushes past the crowd, handing the cup back to the dealer.

 

“I want another game,” he says, and Kenma’s laugh is raspy and dry. Tsunade stops speaking to a flirty older woman to gawk, as if she’d forgotten him.

 

“No one likes a sore loser, kid."

 

“And what have you got to bet?” Kenma wonders, ignoring Tsunade as she sputters. Sasuke reaches for his sword, and lets Kusanagi fall to the floor at Kenma’s feet. The room grows silent.

 

“I don’t deal in weapons,” Kenma rasps, and Tsunade’s eyes take on a hard glint.

 

“Gift from your father?” she asks in a low voice.

 

Sasuke doesn’t answer her. “This sword is worth more than everything you just earned.”

 

Kenma hums. “Put a gun down,” he haggles, already losing interest, “and then we’ll talk value.”

 

He looks away, and Sasuke can almost feel his brother’s life slipping away from a _cheat,_ and impatiently he grabs for Kusanagi, unsheathing it. Kenma instinctively reaches for a dagger, a woman screams, and Tsunade rolls her eyes as the gamblers gasp and shout, scrambling over each other, spilling cups  and bottles of hard liquor. Sasuke brandishes the blade with a proud anger.

 

“Look. At. It.”

 

Kenma stares at him as if he’s gone mad, but Sasuke doesn't move. He only holds the sword straighter. A long moment passes. Kenma’s tongue nervously darts past his lips, his eyes squinted. He takes a tentative step forward, as if Sasuke might run him through at any moment. The old man’s gaze falls down the sword’s length before landing on a symbol near the hilt. His suspicion melts away, until his mouth curves into a cruel grin.

 

“Well,” he chuckles, “you are bold, aren’t you, boy? Bringing a Sannin weapon _here.”_ He shakes his head, like Sasuke is nothing more than a foolish child ready to wave his family fortune under Kenma’s nose for the thrill of a gamble. He taps at the the symbol with a crooked finger, his smile growing like a little boy’s.

 

“Well, well, well. What’s a pretty thing like you doing here?” he whispers to the sword. Kenma runs his fingers over the cold steel. “The Sword of Snakes...it’s supposed to have an elemental affinity…” His hands glide over the hilt like it’s made of gold. A spark licks up the steel, and Kenma laughs when it shocks him.The crowd murmurs in awe.

 

“Lightning,” Sasuke tells him needlessly, and Kenma looks up, his dark eyes catching the light.

 

“I don’t deal in weapons boy,” Kenma lies, and his smile grows wider, “But I always got time to bet on a little magic.” His smile hooks, like a true shark’s, and he sinks to his knees onto the floor.

 

Behind him, Tsunade is grim-faced and furious, her lip curled in a snarl. “Fine,” she agrees, reaching for another bill, but Sasuke stops her.

 

“If I win,” he begins, and she narrows her golden eyes, “I’m holding you to your word _.”_ Something flits across her face _,_ but it’s gone in an instant. Her expression becomes carefully blank, and with a flourish, she reaches for another bill. Sasuke doesn’t miss her glance at Kenma, who remains stoic and still.

 

“You got yourself a bet, brat. Three out of five this time.”

 

Kenma slams the cup to the floor.

 

“Odd,” Sasuke calls out, a spark of adrenaline coursing through him. Tsunade glares at him.

 

“Even,” she says, her lips stretching over her teeth as she speaks. The large group of gamblers watches with bated breath.

 

Kenma raises the cup. “Odd,” he announces, and Tsunade shakes her head, tight-lipped. “Even!” she belts out, before Sasuke can place a bet. He takes his time to say, “odd.” Tsunade throws him a wary look.

 

Kenma’s easy confidence begins to chip away when he lifts the cup. “Five and two. Odd,” he says, his brow furrowed. Tsunade’s face seems to lose all its color. She looks at Sasuke then, calculatingly. Sasuke grins at her.

 

“Call your bet.”

 

Tsunade picks over her answer too slowly, and Sasuke tenses. The group behind them begins to chant, “bet, bet, bet”. Sasuke counts the seconds, his fingers digging into his knees. He can only hope Tsunade will fear exposure and say nothing. There are no good fates for cheaters. There’s the story of one casino owner every new gambler knows, the one who would string up cheaters for a wild game of darts before having security throw them out on the street, penniless after making a “donation”. Another who’d made headlines one winter after throwing a cheat overboard from one of Fire Country’s famous Glittering Cities-cruise zeppelins glitzed and gilded and glittering with white lights, like all the gold its casinos promised if you ever got lucky (no one ever did). Tsunade squints at the cup, as if might speak to her, and suddenly Sasuke is struck by how familiar the expression is.

 

He remembers lazy days playing shogi near the koi pond, when sparring had lingered on too long and Jiraiya would insist that “exercise of the mind” was as important as the exercise of the body. Naruto would ponder over the board, his eyes cut to slits.

 

“You’re a cheat!” he’d cry, whenever Sasuke won three or more times in a row.

 

Sasuke would move his piece and drawl, “Prove it.” Naruto would only grumble, his face lighting up whenever he saw a possible move.

 

Tsunade’s lips quirk, in a way Naruto’s never did, a not-quite smile that promises something dangerous. “Even,” she decides, and Sasuke watches the cup. Her grin widens.

 

“Six and two. Even,” Kenma calls. Tsunade stares at the dice, releasing the breath she’d been holding. Sasuke’s stomach twists and sours.

 

Kenma slaps the cup down onto the mat. Twice more it slaps on the ground, until there is only one try left. 

 

Tsunade mumbles a prayer, her eyes screwing shut. “Odd!” she cries, clapping her hands together. Sasuke takes a breath, trying to ignore the tremor in his hands.

 

“Even.”

 

Kenma reaches for the cup so slowly Sasuke fidgets. The cup is raised. The crowd holds its breath, and finally, Kenma's face reddens in anger. “Even,” he says. The tension leaves Sasuke’s shoulders with a single breath. Kenma meets Sasuke’s gaze furiously, resting the cup on the floor when he grins. There’s no use in making a scene. Word travels fast. If Kenma is going to do anything about the switch, it won’t be here, but Sasuke wills the thought away. The crowd hoots and jabbers, enthused and excited. Reluctantly, Kenma hands Kusanagi back, but makes a show of keeping Tsunade’s single bill, the lines in his tanned face deep with his frown. Tsunade doesn’t move. She looks away from Sasuke, keeping her gaze locked ahead.

 

Sasuke turns to speak to her when a howl pierces the hum of the casino, long and high and slow. The patrons freeze. Kenma retracts his hand before he can deal for the crowd. The lights flicker. Tsunade hisses in a breath through her teeth.

 

The wolf howls again, and Sasuke wonders how anything can make a sound this loud, this piercing, when Kenma apologizes.

 

“It is late,” he admits, and rises. The other players whisper and scurry out of the room, white-faced. Sasuke looks to the open door. People are hurrying down the halls. There is no panic, only quiet fear, an urgency Sasuke can feel like a charge in the air.

 

Sasuke glances to the windows, but all he can see is inky forest. The trees shudder, but it might have been the wind. He straps Kusanagi to his back with quick fingers. “What was that?”

 

The howl sounds again, and behind it, there’s thunder on the rise, but it sounds _alive_. A chill snakes up Sasuke’s spine.

 

Kenma backs away. “It is late,” he echoes, and without another word disappears through a hidden door in the wall, locking it behind him. The lights flicker once more, and when they blaze back to life, Sasuke notices the half-empty bottle of sake next to the mat. He watches the wine slosh and shudder when a rumble shakes the casino. It seems to travel through his skin until the tremors worm into his bones. The bamboo cup jumps on the mat.

 

Tsunade doesn’t move from her spot on the mat. “You switched out the dice.”

 

“I gambled,” says Sasuke. “And I won.” Tsunade scoffs.

 

“Remind me to bring you along next time I need to play a game.”

 

Against his shoulder blades, Kusanagi sparks in its scabbard, slowly coming to life with the storm outside. Behind him, Tsunade looks to the door, silent and unafraid. She stands.

 

Sasuke takes a breath. “What’s out there?”

 

Tsunade smiles as she says, “A demon.” There is a faraway look in her eyes, something familiar Sasuke knows all too well when a sword settles in his hand.

 

The bottle of sake shakes once more. Sasuke braces himself against a wall. Tsunade stands tall in the middle of the room and walks to the door.

 

“I believe we had very specific terms, Uchiha.”

 

Sasuke’s head snaps up to meet her gaze. Tsunade nods at him, and the look on her face is both fierce and resigned. “You wanna know how to kill a god?”

 

Sasuke stares at her. He doesn’t need to say yes. He knows Tsunade can see it in the way he watches her. A part of him wonders what sort of lie she’s going to spit. Another part of him waits, and wonders, and hopes. Because this is _Tsunade,_ the only human being who has ever stalled Kaguya’s killing curse.

 

Tsunade’s shoulders heave with a sigh. “Take a bough from the Yakusugi tree overlooking the grave of Kaguya’s son.”  

 

The lights flicker again, and from somewhere deep in the belly of the wood, something roars, like the thunder. Sasuke pictures Fugaku, taking him by the hand to the Yakusugi tree. _Pray,_ he remembers his father saying. _This is a holy place._ A shudder crawls over Sasuke’s skin.

 

Tsunade’s grin is crooked, made bolder by the rice wine. “Long ago, your ancestors killed him with an arrow made from the bough of a god-tree. It was war; they needed to protect their own. Kaguya’s son was just a casualty.” She looks out the window, and the casino groans. “You corrupted her.” There’s something sad in the way she says it, and Sasuke watches her carefully. “Gods aren’t supposed to feel hatred.” The roar in the wood makes the hairs on the back of Sasuke’s neck stand on end.

 

Tsunade looks over at him, her eyes hard and bright as gold. “Take a bough from the Yakusugi tree and strike her dead with it. If you’re fast, Uchiha, you’ll cure your brother, not me.” She is gone before Sasuke has time to process her secret, and then he’s alone in the empty casino, listening to the angry cries of the demon prowling outside the inn’s barrier.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
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> * Short comments
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> * Long comments
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> * Questions
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> * Constructive criticism
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> * “<3” as extra kudos
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> This author sees and appreciates all comments, and may not reply, but I will certainly try!


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